


Yuán | 缘

by did_you_reboot



Series: After Everything [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Patch 5.1: Vows of Virtue; Deeds of Cruelty Spoilers, Post-Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Reincarnation, Suicidal Thoughts, no beta we die like men, so that alleged slow burn from last time sort of exploded and left embers so now there are embers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:13:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21608941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/did_you_reboot/pseuds/did_you_reboot
Summary: After everything, against all odds, against the god he had summoned with his own breath and his own heart, they were here. Broken and scarred, but here.He had mended the Fourteenth—the Warrior of Light—as best he could. And somehow, after everything, she thought him worth protecting. But now, though they still had to mend the immense, cosmic mess wrought by their own hands, there was the smaller mess of navigating whatshehad become and whathehad become in the wake of the Mothercrystal's requests and gifts.It was daunting and terrifying, but the Warrior of Light was convinced that together they had a chance.Follow-up toSaudade.
Relationships: Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Series: After Everything [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1557385
Comments: 165
Kudos: 260





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and thanks for stopping by! Whether you're someone following along with my shit or someone who stumbled here by accident, thank you! <3
> 
> You'll definitely want to read [Saudade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20620775) before you read this, so pop on over there before you get started here. :)

“ _Hear…”_

_From the darkness of the abyss, a voice called._

“ _Feel…”_

_Thirteen forms stood at attention._

“ _Think…”_

_In the darkness of the abyss, Hades was bathed in the glow of Zodiark._

_The gaze of Zodiark slowly turned to him—and though His form had no eyes, His sight was all-encompassing._

“ _Thou hast strayed, Emet-Selch.”_

_From the darkness of the abyss, an emotion took form._

_It was one never felt in the presence of Zodiark._

_He felt fear._

_A deep fear from the depths of his soul._

_At his right, Lahabrea slowly turned to look at him._

“ _Why, Emet-Selch?”_

_And Elidibus, on his left._

“ _Was it that easy to cast us aside?”_

_Nabriales._

“ _We need you.”_

_Pashtarot._

“ _Zodiark needs you.”_

_From the darkness of the abyss, he tried to find his voice._

_But it wouldn’t come._

_Altima turned around with her arm outstretched._

“ _You’ve forsaken us for this aberration.”_

_He turned._

_The Light of Hydaelyn glowed faintly in the distance._

_Igeyohrm turned with her arm outstretched._

“ _You’ve forsaken us for this malformed creature.”_

_A dark figure stood silhouetted against the Light._

_Athena stood in the Light of Hydaelyn._

_Though Hades wasn’t sure he had a heart in this abyss, something was pounding in his chest._

_Slowly—slowly—_

_Slowly Athena raised a hand and pointed, and Igeyohrm exploded into a cloud of dust._

_He followed the path of her arm as it slowly found another target._

_She pointed to Nabriales, and he, too, scattered into dust._

_Hades turned to Lahabrea as panic gripped him._

_Lahabrea—gone._

_He desperately reached out to Elidibus—_

_His fingers closed over naught._

_And as he wheeled around to the remaining Convocation, the dread took him but he could do nothing—he could do nothing—_

_Wordlessly, soundlessly, they all dissolved away._

_As she approached in the dark glow of Zodiark with her arm outstretched, Hades wondered if she was coming for him, too—_

_She stopped and stood before him, and he could see the thin glowing seams where her Sundered soul was rejoined—_

_And she slowly turned her hand up to his god—_

_A soul-piercing keening filled him—Zodiark was crying out for help—_

_He turned to look up at Him and His intensifying glow—_

_But the sound was soon extinguished_

_and so, too, His glow_

_and into the abyss, Zodiark scattered into dust._

_Hades looked back—_

_He looked back to the slayer of primals—_

_To the god-killer—_

_To the lost Fourteenth—_

_To Athena—  
_

_With tears in her eyes and a smile bearing a thousand thousand years of sorrow, she placed her hand on her chest._

_And before he could find his voice—_

— _before he could stop her—_

_Athena and Hydaelyn dissolved into dust and left him alone in the darkness of the abyss._

* * *

In the gentle light of the dawn, Hades woke.

He looked to the window and the brightening sky outside.

He looked to the table and the flower vase sitting upon it.

He looked to his body and the disheveled quilt covering it.

Slowly, the haze of confusion began fading from his mind.

 _Just another dream_.

With a long, heavy sigh, he melted back into the bed and shut his eyes. His dreams these days were often unpleasant; not quite nightmares, but stressful enough to leave him weary and anxious and sometimes disoriented when he woke. In spite of his best efforts to fend off the weariness by sleeping and waking at the same time each day—with absolutely no naps, no matter how tired he was—he still woke every morning just as tired as if he had slept but a single bell. He supposed this wasn’t all that different from the past exhaustion that plagued him, where sleeping for decades left him only _marginally_ less tired.

But here and now, with his severely weakened soul in the vessel gifted by Hydaelyn, he was functionally mortal.

And it was ill-advised for mortals to sleep for decades at a time. Or even one year at a time.

Not that it would help in the end, he supposed.

Hades groaned and forced himself to sit upright, but his body only obeyed halfway—the weight of the waking world was _much_ too much for him at the moment and he slumped forward with his face in his hands. As he breathed deeply with his eyes tightly shut behind his fingers, he felt some small amount of comfort that there were no witnesses to this monumental struggle to simply get out of bed; at least now he wasn’t the Emperor of the Garlean Empire and had no need to be properly royal as when attendants came to rouse him, nor must he suffer the silent looks of disapproval from the Empress, who had been a quintessential Morning Person that found his grumbling unbecoming of the ruler of an entire empire.

Nor did he have Athena—who also hated mornings and whoever had invented them—to physically drag him from the bed by the arms.

And with that, a strangled noise of frustration escaped his throat—in an effort to shove the thought aside, he threw the sheets off and heaved himself onto his feet.

In these days, most mornings began like so.

In these days, he was afforded a level of freedom that proved to be a double-edged sword. The freedom to _mostly_ do as he pleased—with conditions imposed upon him by others and by his own self—came with the need to consider what to do in the day-to-day now that he hadn’t the ability to simply _make things happen_ with a snap of his fingers. Said day-to-day was busy but served as a poor distraction from the gamut of unpleasant emotions that crept uncontrollably from the back of his mind—emotions ranging from deep guilt to sorrow to frustrated rage.

The Warrior of Light— _Annaiette_ —had arranged for a room for him in the Pendants once he had sufficiently recovered from the entire ordeal of realigning her soul and subsequently nearly dying again. She claimed it was to allow him a space of his own to deal with _things—_ she didn’t elaborate but between the both of them her meaning was abundantly clear—but he knew it also served as a means for the Crystal Exarch and Scions to come to terms with _him_. In return, Annaiette asked for naught more than for him to find some way to help. She didn’t specify just _what_ to help with, because though she had ideas, none were achievable with him in his current state.

The question of _what_ weighed heavily in his mind this morning—just as it did every morning for the past two moons—as he gathered his clothes and made his way to the shared bathroom on this floor of the Pendants.

He still didn’t know how he might truly help here. So far, Urianger had asked for assistance cataloguing a hoard of relatively useless tomes he and the Exarch had recently uncovered, and while he was helping, it wasn’t _helping_ , not in the way he or Annaiette wished. He couldn’t perform any useful magicks—it seemed Hydaelyn hadn’t the strength to restore him completely or even in a way that allowed him proper control of his aether. Neither could he fight nor hunt—he was unbearably weak and though he was making an effort to return the strength and weight to his body, that was an endeavor which required time and an appetite for food. These days he didn’t often wish to eat and sometimes couldn’t when he did want to.

In the face of this freedom, the unfamiliar feeling of abject uselessness was crushing.

“Good morning, Hades.”

Annaiette stood at the door to his room, patiently waiting for his return from the bathroom. She looked a little disheveled and a little bloody, but the relaxed smile on her face and the food precariously held in her arms told him she was at least physically all right.

And within her, her soul—still incomplete but realigned and distinctly hers—twinkled brightly.

“Good morning,” he replied as he unlocked the door and gestured for her to enter.

He couldn’t help but smile as she stepped in and carefully but hurriedly set the food on the table before it all slipped from her arms. This—the eagerness and haphazard armfuls of food or whatever else—was familiar. But with a small pang in his chest, he knew it was something familiar only to him; she couldn’t remember the times she had done this for himself and Hythlodaeus, nor the times when it had ended with a disastrous smattering of food on the ground.

There were so, so many things she didn’t remember.

“What’s wrong?” she asked curiously as she took the greatsword from her back and leaned it against the wall.

By now he had learned to never respond with “nothing” because it only filled her with concern, so instead he asked, “When did you return?”

There was the slightest grimace on her face as she eased herself into a chair. “Last night,” she said simply before pushing a bowl of sausages and a pile of tiny pastries toward him—as always, it was perhaps thrice the amount of food he was capable of eating.

The dark lines under her eyes and the dried smears of blood on her armor told him that she hadn’t spent the night sleeping.

With her aether and her soul finally calmed, she was back to solving everyone’s problems as she was evidently the only person competent enough to do so. But he knew she wasn't sleeping properly these days, not really; there was something haunted in her eyes and her soul in spite of her relative health, and whatever it was that was bothering her, she was very much not forthcoming to him about it.

“And how is the Source getting along in the absence of the Warrior of Light?” Hades asked lightly, taking a seat across from her with a thin smile.

She ran her fingers through her hair, and though she had a smile on her face, the long-suffering darkness in her eyes told him that the Source was apparently _not_ getting along in the absence of the Warrior of Light.

“Varis is dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: mornings suck, esp when you find out your grandson died somehow**  
>   
>  anywho! this chapter is pretty slow because it's like...the first one. and shit needs to get warmed up. AS ALWAYS, THANK YOU AND I LOVE YOU ALL


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm basically writing AU by now so don't mind me mixing up the order of 5.1 msq haha
> 
> ...totally did that on purpose...yep...

“Varis is dead.”

Hades arched an eyebrow at this news. Certainly not what he would have expected to come out of her mouth first thing in the morning. But in spite of her smile—forced now, it seemed—there was a furrow in her brow and a sort of weary slump in her body that made it clear that his grandson was not dead by her hand.

“I must admit I hadn’t expected him to go so soon,” said Hades, crossing his arms. “How?”

She rested an elbow on the table and rubbed her eyes with a heavy sigh—and slowly, the smile faded and was replaced with a grimace of mingled pain and frustration.

“Zenos killed him.”

These words were also not the ones he expected to come out of her mouth.

“That was most definitely _not_ part of the plan,” Hades said with a frown. “What is Elidibus thinking?”

Annaiette opened one eye to look at him and gave the smallest shake of her head.

“Not Elidibus. Zenos.”

The distinction gave him pause.

“Explain.”

“I saw how it happened with the Echo.” Her voice was heavy. “It was definitely Zenos.”

His frown only deepened. “What? Why would Elidibus flee?”

She shifted to rest her other elbow on the table, covering her face with her hands. “I can’t say. But there _was_ something about Zenos—perhaps because of his power as a Resonant. He disappeared through a portal. Like an Ascian.”

A silence came over her as her shoulders sagged.

Hades straightened up, the furrow in his brow ever deepening. “The Resonant?” he murmured in surprise. He’d heard murmurs of this research when he was Solus zos Galvus, but he had been on his deathbed and too far gone to know much else about it…

Annaiette took her hands from her face and met his gaze. Her eyes—filled with darkness and anguish—bore through him.

“Zenos had it researched. He has it. He has it, and if he has not already mastered it, then he’s like to be close.”

This was certainly a development. If Elidibus vacated Zenos’ body due to this new power, it was likely he had fled to formulate a new plan...

A wry laugh escaped Annaiette’s lips. “Your great-grandson will be the death of me. What did you feed that boy?”

Hades shifted uncomfortably in his seat, unable to bring himself to laugh at her quip. The Royal Family’s dysfunction was very much a successful product of his own design, but he would be lying if the dysfunction of Zenos yae Galvus hadn’t at times made him wonder if he was perhaps _too_ successful.

And now that dysfunction was coupled with the power of the artificial Echo.

Still, in another time and another life, Hades had been quite pleased with his handiwork in creating him; in _this_ moment, in _this_ life, however, knowing that Zenos was growing ever more powerful was but one more unpleasant feeling to file away in his overflowing-but-still-uncontrollably-growing collection of Unpleasant Feelings.

He couldn’t help but wonder, too, what chaos might be unfolding in Garlemald in the absence of the crown prince.

Annaiette let out a slow, beleaguered breath before straightening up with a sort of helpless half-smile on her face. “Can’t quite do anything about it at the moment, I suppose,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you first. Because—you know…Anyways, eat something.”

She said this brightly and cheerfully—as though they had not just discussed this worrying development regarding his great-grandson—and to emphasize that her words were more behest than request, she pushed a bowl of diced popotos and a fork toward him with an expectant look, before considering a pastry for a brief moment. Whatever options she was weighing in her mind somehow led her to take one and shove the entire thing in her mouth. The pastry was not full-sized, but she was nonetheless quite bold to put the whole thing in her mouth and expect it to go well.

The sight of her and how she had immediately regretted her decision was too much for Hades, and he couldn’t help but smile in amusement. “Do try not to choke. I’m not terribly confident in my ability to save you should you find an entire pastry stuck in your throat,” he said, only just stifling a laugh. He busied himself with the popotos and sausage whilst she sorted out her current situation, though he casually kept an eye on her in the off chance that the Warrior of Light found herself in danger of falling to a baked good.

Finally, when she had managed to clear her mouth of pastry, she leaned on the table and dramatically took a deep breath, as though she’d seen her end and beyond. “Perhaps don’t do _that_ ,” she said hoarsely. “Wouldn’t recommend it.”

“And why is that?” Hades asked, smirking—it was obvious she was purposefully playing up her near-death-by-pastry experience in order to lighten the mood, and it certainly wouldn’t do to not play along.

She coughed to clear her throat, then gave him a mock-serious nod.

“It’s quite dangerous. I barely escaped with my life.”

At last, in spite of the dread that had started building in his stomach, Hades allowed himself to laugh—

She grinned and responded in kind—

In this morning with their laughs filling the room, the bad news and bad feelings weighing them down were lifted for a tiny moment of lighthearted relief.

* * *

For the first moon following all that had come to pass, the Exarch’s relationship with Hades could be described thus: nonexistent.

Apart from appearing somewhere within his periphery every couple of suns—likely to ensure Hades wasn’t causing trouble—the Exarch had made himself quite scarce and had hardly spoken a word to him. Not that Hades minded nor cared; the Exarch’s refusal to suffer his presence was to be expected. He and the Exarch did, however, make an effort to sometimes offer polite greetings when they did happen to come within 10 yalms of each other. Tense, stiff greetings, but greetings nonetheless.

This morning as he and Annaiette entered the Ocular, he tipped his head to the Exarch and received an almost reluctant nod in return.

“Good morning, G’raha Tia,” Annaiette said lightly as she drew closer to the Exarch, though the understated cheer in her voice was contrasted by a subtle stiffness in her shoulders. Hades noted a hint of hesitation in her greeting—or was it anxiety? Fear? Whichever it was, it was no matter; Hades felt it pulling at something within him all the same.

“Good morning, my friend,” replied the Exarch. He smiled warmly, but he, too, appeared _just_ slightly tensed in both body and voice, and his ears ever so slightly drooping.

Though it was somewhat disheartening to see Annaiette so tense around the Exarch—and the Exarch as such around her—Hades couldn’t fault him for his behavior; to learn that his _treasured friend_ had past history with the man responsible for masterminding the calamities which snuffed out untold lives—

Hades exhaled slowly to center himself.

He was no stranger to dark, creeping thoughts that hovered in the back of his mind; he had endured them for thousands upon thousands of years, after all. But now, without the intense and insidious devotion to Zodiark to help repress them, the dark, creeping thoughts were far more creeping and far darker than they ever had been. And so they should be, with the weight of all his—

He slowly exhaled once more to bring himself back to _here_ and _now_.

For lack of a better place to stand, he kept to the back of the Ocular whilst Annaiette spoke with the Exarch—in the past, he might have enjoyed vexing the Exarch and the Scions by lurking in the back as he once did. And as the Scions arrived one by one for their meeting with the Exarch and Annaiette, it seemed that that Alisaie at least appeared sufficiently vexed by him— but Hades found that today he felt no such enjoyment. And he hadn’t the opportunity to test this with Thancred; once the tardy Urianger arrived, he explained that Thancred and the Oracle were gallivanting about in the Empty or the like.

“Krile appraised me of the situation with your bodies,” Annaiette began once everyone had settled. She pulled a small sheaf of paper from her pocket and unfolded it, then squinted at whatever was written on it. “She’s written quite a thorough report which is slightly beyond me, but the short of it is that the links between your bodies and souls are weakening—and we don’t know what will happen if it breaks. Likely something bad.”

“In which case, it is imperative that we find a way to return you all safely to your bodies,” the Exarch said gravely, casting his eyes about the room. “It may help to start with the method by which I mistakenly summoned you all here:  a magick based on the Crystal Tower’s ability to open a door to the Void. The ability to cut a hole through reality—to reach across dimensions.”

Hades furrowed his brow in confusion. Though he had aimed to keep silent during this little meeting, with this small revelation he couldn’t stop himself from interrupting.

“Wait a moment, Exarch. You’re saying that your friends are like this—” He made a sweeping gesture toward the Scions. “—by _mistake?_ I _knew_ there was something odd about their souls but it seems I mistakenly assumed you meant to summon them this way.”

The Exarch was almost indignant at his words. “Why in the world would I want them to be this way?” he asked. Hades shrugged.

“When first I noticed, I puzzled over it for a time but could come up with no satisfactory answer. It made no difference to me, besides,” said Hades, crossing his arms. He shook his head, tsking in disbelief. “That you tore their souls from their bodies _by accident_ …”

“It was the best I could manage—I did it to save our worlds,” the Exarch said hotly.

Hades fixed the Exarch with a pointed look as he mulled over just _what_ the Exarch has done.

“But you can’t return them with the same method,” Hades said finally.

He said it slowly—slowly enough to impress upon them the sheer recklessness of the Exarch’s actions—and the annoyed but helpless look on the Exarch’s face made it clear that Hades had hit the nail directly on the head.

“I can’t say I’m terribly surprised,” Hades continued, smirking at the sight of the floundering Exarch. While he hadn’t felt enjoyment at vexing them earlier, he thought he might feel a glimmer of it now. “The Tower has sustained some damage, after all. That you didn’t lose their souls to the Rift is quite the achievement indeed…”

“ _Your opinion is duly noted, Emet-Selch_ ,” said the Exarch through his teeth—he was quite disgruntled now. “As I obviously cannot return them using the Tower, we must needs search for an alternative solution.”

As Urianger launched into a theory which made use of white auracite, Hades found his mind drifting back to thoughts of the Crystal Tower. Back when he had first introduced himself to the Scions and Annaiette, he had taken the liberty of examining the Tower. Many of its systems—the originals and newer but cruder ones—were damaged either by time or the journey through it, but they were clearly functional enough to get the Warrior of Light hale and whole across the Rift. If the only problem was reliable targeting, then perhaps it was possible to repair it enough for the Exarch to open a doorway and latch onto the Scions’ bodies. Or if not the targeting, then perhaps they might undo the bond to their souls that drove the Exarch’s brash attempt to throw himself into the Rift. Or even more ambitiously, they could open a stable doorway for the Scions _themselves_ to walk through—or to bring their bodies here to the First.

There were sure to be parts they could cannibalize from nonessential Tower systems if the damage was not too significant, but he racked his brain for any other sources of functional Allagan parts that could be used for repairs...

And then he remembered Azys Lla.

Azys Lla was still stable in the skies of the Source, and its systems were in far, far better shape than the Crystal Tower’s...

Just as Urianger began suggesting that their souls be made dormant to be placed within white auracite—an exceedingly foolish idea which would only end in disaster—

“That plan is wonderful if you wish to to gamble with your soul,” Hades interrupted. They all turned to him with a mixture of surprise and curiosity.

“Do you have a better alternative, then?” the Exarch asked, bristling slightly. Hades tilted his head _just so_ and smiled.

“I do, in fact,” he said lightly. “You brought them here with the Tower, so it stands to reason that we use it to return them to normal.”

“You just said it was damaged,” said Annaiette, raising her eyebrows.

“I did. But depending on the extent of the damage, it may be possible to repair it.”

The Exarch’s ears perked up ever so slightly. “Repair it? But it is a massively complicated system—I had years to study it and could only just grasp it.” The irritation was fading from his voice, replaced with a sort of earnest interest.

“You forget, my dear Exarch, who it was that _built_ the Allagan Empire. How do you think they managed to develop such advanced technology?” Hades said lightly, his voice almost singsong. He liked this feeling—it was something that felt _normal_ , and it helped mask the dread and anxiety that he was struggling to push down.

The Scions exchanged skeptical looks, though it seemed that Urianger, Alphinaud, and Y’shtola were at least intrigued by the idea. Hades was pleasantly surprised by the change that came over the Exarch—his annoyance was now completely gone, and he seemed very much interested by the prospect of repairing the Tower.

“I make no promises,” said Hades. “My previous inspections were superficial at best. It may be that the damage is too extensive to repair without the ability to manufacture parts—”

He glanced to Annaiette and found a smile on her face—it wasn’t quite a grin but it radiated what he could only describe as a mixture of hope and approval. And in seeing her smile coupled with the glint in her eyes, it slowly dawned on him that this could be it—

“—but I will do what I can.”

— _this could be a way he might actually help._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: time to be tech support**
> 
> it's still kinda slow and i'm still feelin like quality is sorta shit, but hope y'all enjoy it all the same! <3


	3. Chapter 3

The systems that formed the Emperor’s Throne were sprawling and massive in their complexity. And with the unfamiliar Ironworks, Alexander, and Omega technologies grafted onto them, the full system was almost too overwhelming for Hades to grasp.

The Exarch had provided all the relevant tomes and datalogs that he could find, and had given the best summary he could of the changes and additions to the Crystal Tower by Garlond Ironworks. Hades was admittedly a _little_ surprised that the Crystal Exarch turned out to be a more scholarly sort of fellow than whatever an Exarch was supposed to be; the Exarch’s summaries of the various systems were quite thorough and well-organized, and while he and the Exarch weren’t exactly _friendly_ , he found that when the Tower was involved, the Exarch was amenable to discussion and conversation.

It was immediately clear that Garlond Ironworks and the Exarch had as good a grasp on the Crystal Tower as could be expected, but though their reasoning was solid, they had made some fundamentally incorrect assumptions about key Tower systems. And because of these incorrect assumptions, the odds of their success had been been astronomical...That Annaiette and the Scions and the Crystal Tower itself hadn’t merely winked out of existence was, quite frankly, astounding. But they were here in the First—Annaiette with her mortal body no less—and that was certainly something to commend.

And after a suns’ worth of discussions and with both his and the Exarch’s knowledge reasonably refreshed, Hades felt it was time to visit the main controls for the Emperor’s Throne.

“I found this room soon after I sealed the door to the Crystal Tower, though at the time I hadn’t the slightest idea what to do with any of it,” the Exarch explained when they reached the door to the main control room. He held out a hand and the door obediently acknowledged him before sliding open.

The sprawling main control room before them—with all aspects of the Crystal Tower at one’s fingertips—was difficult enough even for the Allagans who configured the Tower, let alone an Eorzean five thousand years after the fact.

It appeared that the circular room was currently in standby mode, unchanged from its state when Hades had briefly entered the day he had first inspected the Tower. The lighting was dim and the room drab—partly because it appeared that some of the lighting was broken—but when the Exarch put a hand to the lone panel glowing invitingly in the center console, the Allagans’ characteristic channels of light in the walls and floor flared into life as holographic screens winked on in a cascade around the perimeter of the room, until finally three large screens bearing statistics and diagrams activated on the walls, awaiting the command of its masters.

“How much did you and the Ironworks touch in here?” Hades asked as he examined the statistics on one of the large screens.

“Very little, actually,” the Exarch replied. “We thought it best not to meddle overmuch with systems we didn’t fully grasp, lest we irreparably change the Tower with no knowledge of how to put it right.”

Hades crossed his arms and frowned at just what the statistics and diagrams were telling him. It appeared that several auxiliary systems were completely offline, and that four others were receiving corrupted signals. He pointed to the diagram of the Tower on the large center screen—several basement sections were outlined in red. “Do you know what happened there?” he asked, glancing to the Exarch.

“Ah, I believe those areas are where Garlond Ironworks had spliced their systems into the Tower,” the Exarch said after a moment of scrutinizing the screen.

However, he quickly fell silent with a sort of faraway look in his eyes—a faraway look with a shadow of regret and pain. It was the sort of look that made Hades acutely aware of all the Crystal Exarch and Garlond Ironworks had endured. Their world teetering on the edge of destruction—giving themselves in one last, massive gamble to right the wrongs—no matter if the gamble itself was the right one to make—

It was a story that, truthfully, sounded a _bit_ familiar.

“In any case,” the Exarch continued once he pulled himself out of whatever pit his mind had fallen into, “what did you need from the control room?”

“A run of the Tower health diagnostics is in order,” Hades explained as he stepped up to the center console. The Exarch hovered an arm’s length behind him and craned his neck to see, and Hades stifled a laugh—it was obvious that the Exarch’s reluctance to stand close to him was at odds with his keen interest in the task at hand.

Hades couldn’t quite remember the commands to trigger the particular diagnostics he wished to run—it had been several thousand years since he had done aught with the Crystal Tower—and so he entered a command to summon the guide containing a list of all available diagnostic commands and their usage—

“Just a moment, Emet-Selch,” came the Exarch’s voice. It seemed the Exarch’s curiosity overcame his unwillingness to be near, and he stepped up beside him. “What are you doing?”

“Ah. The Allagans included a usage guide for any and all commands usable in the Crystal Tower,” said Hades lightly. “I admit that I pushed them to do it for my own benefit, for when the time came for the Empire to be no more. Which, it seems, has proved quite a boon today.”

The usage guide also reminded him of the _other_ helpful feature he had secretly encouraged the Allagans to add for his own benefit, and he moved to a console on the left to enter another command. The Exarch may actually attempt to murder him upon realization of what this feature was, but Hades decided the look on the Exarch’s face would be worth the risk of death.

“I think you’ll quite like this, Exarch,” he said with a hint of a cheek as he confirmed the command in the console.

A spherical device suspended from the center of the ceiling flared on, and a moment later a hologram of the Crystal Tower materialized in the center of the room. With another command on the console, the hologram of the Tower enlarged the basement areas, and with yet one command more, all the components making up those sections spread out into an exploded view.

“It’s unwieldy to have this view up for longer than is necessary as it’s so large, but it’s quite useful, don’t you think?”

The Exarch slowly turned to look at him, and the predicted murderous glint in his eyes was most definitely worth the danger of strangulation or bludgeoning.

“This—this has been available this whole time?” the Exarch asked slowly. His voice was carefully level, and clearly he was taking great care to temper his obvious rage.

“Certainly. The guide would have told you how.”

Hades wondered how the Exarch was going to explain to Annaiette that he had murdered the man who had saved her life.

“Are you— _the good this would have done us—!_ ” the Exarch hissed under his breath and for a moment he looked like he was going to raise his staff to strike him, but he quickly stopped himself. Closing his eyes, he exhaled slowly and the rage in his face gave way to a measured calm.

There was a small pang of guilt in Hades’ stomach as silence fell over them—he was enjoying himself, true, but _perhaps maybe_ he shouldn’t have done that, especially if he was trying to have some semblance of a civil relationship with the Exarch...

“That you and Garlond Ironworks managed what you did without this is nothing short of astonishing.”

The Exarch opened his eyes and gave him a skeptical look, to which Hades smirked. “I tell you no lies, Exarch. What you all accomplished was quite impressive.” And for good measure, he added, “You ought to be proud.”

The Exarch scoffed at his praise, but not before a hint of a smile crossed his face. He turned back to the hologram of components now filling the center of the room.

“What did you need here, Emet-Selch?”

“We need to learn the full extent of the damage,” Hades said, moving back to the center console. He paused with his hand over the screen—for a moment the urge to irritate the Exarch and the nagging feeling that he _probably should not_ warred within him—until finally he exhaled slowly and glanced at the Exarch over his shoulder. “I can show you how if you wish.”

Though the Exarch’s face bore a calm and almost stately interest, the twitching of his ears betrayed his unspoken excitement.

* * *

After nearly a week of poring over texts and deciphering diagrams, Hades found himself sitting numbly along the edge of the Crystarium holding the bacon bread that Annaiette had pressed into his hands.

She had arrived at the Tower a bell ago to see how everything was coming along and had peered into the control room, where the Exarch, Hades, and Urianger—who had taken to Allagan technology quite readily—had set up shop with all the Ironworks journals and tomes that they could find. They’d been hunched over a large diagram and evidently it was obvious in their eyes that they had not left the control room for several bells. Annaiette had quite vehemently insisted they all take a break to rest as she pushed bacon bread at them. “Go get some fresh air. The Tower will still be here tomorrow,” she had said. But with a smile, she’d added, “Probably.”

Though the rest was welcome, there was a deep restlessness within him to continue the work; it was something new to do—something to do which might prove truly helpful—though perhaps the most appealing thing about it was that it also provided an excellent distraction from the inescapable self-loathing that made it so, so difficult to pull himself out of bed.

With the work on the Tower, he could ignore the ever-present despair in the depths of his mind.

Alone, away from the Tower, he couldn’t ignore the ache in him, the ache that felt as a wedge driving itself between his body and mind. He hated the feeling—the feeling of losing his grasp on that which he had managed to endure for eons—

Here, away from the Tower with this bread in his hands and the weight of the sins in his heart he struggled to reel himself back—

The rocks far, far down past the edge of the Crystarium looked incredibly appealing.

Hades let out a shuddering breath and tore a piece from the loaf—now slightly damp from his tears—

And his thoughts screamed back at him without the work on the Tower to soften them—

And in spite of the objective good he could do if the Tower could be mended—

His thoughts screamed of his summary failures—

Of how he couldn’t control the spiraling emotions within—

Of how he was now just a broken wretch eating damp bread—

His thoughts were loud—unbearable in this moment alone—

And in this moment, he wondered if he had been worth saving at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: the exarch didn't read the fucking manual**
> 
> it sort of ends weirdly because i was gonna write more but then it would've probably doubled the length soooo that will be its own chapter XD
> 
> also, i am very passionate about documentation, for a couple reasons:
> 
> 1\. tells other people how to use the thing so they don't bother you
> 
> 2\. it tells YOU how to do the thing when you've forgotten 3 months—5000 years after you made it
> 
> 3\. if you leave the company, or are hit by a bus, or are broken into 14 pieces after one god drop-kicked another one and sundered reality, then it's easier for whoever else to figure out what the fuck this thing is for


	4. Chapter 4

Hades hardly noticed that the sun had dipped below the horizon.

He had long since finished eating the bacon bread, and finally he had wrestled the awful thoughts back under his control. But in their place came a deep lethargy—in his mind he knew he should get up and go to his inn room if he was going to continue sitting listlessly into the night, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. When he had all his powers he could have easily done all that he needed while expending only the slightest amounts of aether, but without them he had to _physically go places_ and that was entirely more than he cared to do at the moment.

He looked at his empty hands and let out a long sigh.

They were hands that couldn’t grasp the Creation magicks he so dearly missed—not because Hydaelyn had taken them as he first thought upon his return to the mortal realm, but because She hadn’t been strong enough to provide him a vessel with the requisite aether…But no matter the reason why, Creation magicks were out of the question in his current state, and he didn’t— _couldn’t_ —see that improving in the future.

His control was slipping again, and it was difficult to breathe.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets to get them out of sight.

“Ah, so this is where you’ve been.”

He heard the sound of something heavy being stuck in the grass, before Annaiette appeared and sat down beside him. “I stopped by your room and thought maybe you’d gone to bed early,” she said with a small smile.

The presence of another pulled some of his lethargy back—with another person here he had to at least _appear_ alive.

“Just following your suggestion from earlier. Fresh air, was it?” Hades said wryly. She laughed and nodded in approval.

“Well, you’ve picked a good spot for it.” There was a brief silence before Annaiette’s expression softened slightly, and he could see the concern in her eyes. “Are you feeling all right, Hades?”

Annaiette certainly didn’t appear in good enough condition herself to be asking if _he_ was the one feeling all right; the dark lines under her eyes hadn’t improved at all, and there was a distinct weariness to her voice that suggested she ought to sleep for a day or three. And so, he said:

“I’m all right.”

It was obvious she didn’t believe any of those words—it was evident from her face all the way to the very pulse of her soul.

She let out a small “hmm” but didn’t say anything further, and instead turned to look up at the moonlit sky. They sat in a comfortable silence—her presence and concern was an unexpected relief that somewhat loosened the tightness in his chest.

After what felt like ages but couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, Annaiette turned her head back to him. “I asked the Exarch if he would mind if I set up striking dummies in the Crystarium,” she said. “I thought it would be nice to not have to massacre creatures when I want to get some practice in. He seemed to like the idea.” She paused—just a brief hesitation as though unsure of herself for a fleeting moment—before finally the corners of her eyes turned up in a smile. “If you’d like to use them once they’re up, I’ve a decent number of weapons in storage—you can take your pick.”

He was suddenly very aware of the sensation of empty hands—holding a weapon in them felt like a very good idea.

“I got a manatrigger recently, just to see how it feels. I think I prefer my greatsword, but there’s something very dashing about the manatrigger,” Annaiette continued, her smile widening to a grin as she held her left arm up and pretended to look down invisible sights. “I saw Gaius do this and I will admit that I lost my cool for a moment. Is this typical training in Garlemald, or is it something unique to him?”

Hades let out a small snort of amusement. From what he remembered from his time with the Echo, her interactions with Gaius had been limited to fighting him—when did she find time to _lose her cool_ about his sharpshooting techniques?

“Not basic training, no, but it’s typical of those skilled with firearms. Which Gaius was.”

He had barely finished speaking before she was on her feet, still holding her left arm up and aiming at invisible enemies. “I tried it once myself, but—ah—let’s just say I never did take to firearms,” she said, looking to him in embarrassment.

Her laugh and her cheer and her smile in spite of the exhaustion clear in her body and soul—it was contagious, and he found he was smiling himself despite the crushing weight doing its damndest to drag him into the depths of despair.

* * *

The Exarch loomed in the doorway as Hades sat down at the table in the control room, just conspicuously enough to draw attention.

Hades was much too tired and it was entirely too early to be dealing with whatever it was the Exarch was being vaguely conspicuous about, but after a moment’s thought, he decided that he would rather the Exarch speak his mind now rather than wait in tense anticipation. Without looking up from the journal he had opened in an attempt to rekindle his mind, Hades wearily called out, “Good morning, Exarch. I suspect you want something from me. What is it?”

The Exarch stood motionless for a moment, before stepping closer and holding something out.

Hades looked up.

It was a mug of coffee.

Hades narrowed his eyes. The Exarch and Urianger had thus far preferred tea as they worked, and this was the first appearance of coffee. Not to mention the last time they had coffee together, Hades had been dramatically marched into the kitchen in order to watch the Exarch shoot himself in the foot.

“What do you want, Exarch?” he asked suspiciously. Perhaps the Exarch meant to shoot himself in the foot again.

With a small sigh, the Exarch placed the mug before him and took a seat across the table. Hades watched him with growing suspicion—the Exarch was certainly taking his time gathering his thoughts as he sipped his own coffee, so whatever was coming was likely not going to be pleasant.

“I wanted to ask you about Annaiette,” the Exarch said finally. “She has been out of sorts for some time now, but Y’shtola and Urianger have found nothing of concern. And, as Annaiette is wont to do, she insists that she is perfectly fine.”

The Exarch was quite good at claiming to have a question and then not asking a _question._

“Do you often do this to others?” Hades asked. “That was not a question, Exarch.”

The Exarch closed his eyes and breathed out slowly to keep himself level. “I just _thought_ —” he began, opening his eyes and fixing Hades with a severe look, “—I thought you might know if there was aught we could do for her.”

To be asked this question—for the Exarch to ask _him_ —was bewildering. “Why are you asking _me_ that?”

He hadn’t expected the Exarch to look equally bewildered.

“I—well—you and Annaiette—you spend quite a bit of time with her, don’t you?” The Exarch avoided Hades’ gaze as the words spilled out of his mouth, before bringing his mug to his lips as he finished.

Hades was momentarily dumbstruck by what the Exarch must be implying.

“I think you’ve made more than a few incorrect assumptions here, Exarch,” said Hades. “I was _honestly_ beginning to think you were one of the smart ones.”

The Exarch shot him a glare over the rim of the mug.

Hades wondered if the Exarch offered coffee to other people when trying to have difficult conversations. Perhaps the coffee afforded him the energy to breach uncomfortable topics.

“Regardless,” the Exarch said in a small huff, “I’m concerned about her. I don’t like going behind her back like this, but I fear she could get hurt if she is out there and not herself.”

“I’m afraid I’ve nothing to offer at the moment. She’s very much determined to dodge any questions about her wellbeing,” Hades said, frowning and leaning back against the chair. Something about the way the Exarch was—in his own words— _going behind her back_ didn’t sit well with him. While Hades and Annaiette were careful around each other because of the confusing and fraught nature of their current… _situation_ , surely the Exarch was in a far better position to be having a serious conversation about her wellbeing than he?

The Exarch’s face fell at this news. “I see. Well, if something should come to mind and there is aught I can do, please let me know.”

“…As you wish.”

With this exchange it seemed the words between them were spent, and only their coffee-sipping and the hum of the control room permeated the otherwise awkward, uncomfortable silence.

* * *

Night had fallen by the time Hades left the Crystal Tower. He finally felt satisfied with his understanding the modifications and additions by Garlond Ironworks—or at least their intent—and he thought he might ask Annaiette if she would like to accompany him to examine the actual systems _in situ_. Partly because he thought she might be interested in seeing them, but also because he was not in any shape or form to be fighting wayward Allagan constructs and Annaiette was the only one he trusted; she could face them and likely find it little more than moderate exercise, and she _probably_ wouldn’t leave him to die.

It was frustrating that this vessel was so weak so as to require others to protect him, but between the profound shame and the Tower work that kept the darkness at bay, he felt that rebuilding the vessel’s strength was achievable in a way he hadn’t felt since his unceremonious return from death. The striking dummies that Annaiette wished to install would certainly help.

As he made his way back to the Pendants, he found himself wondering where she might be. The Exarch’s request that morning weighed heavily upon him all day—Hades had tried gently asking Annaiette a handful of times about how she felt, but each time he was met with a smile and either a quick but casual change of subject or a quick and not-quite-casual excuse to take her leave. He had half a mind to check if she was in her room, but she was gone more often than not and as he hadn’t seen her in two suns now, he couldn’t even be sure she was on the First at all.

He gave a sidelong glance toward the Wandering Stairs as he passed and stopped in his tracks when he caught a glint of the distinctive hue of Annaiette’s soul through the deck. Now seemed as good a time as any to check on how she was doing, so he made his way up and found Annaiette sitting at a table off in a dim section of the bar. As he drew nearer, he noted the half-empty bottle of mead on the table, with a matching empty one beside it. A grilled bream, almost certainly cold, sat nearly untouched.

“Good evening, Annaiette,” he said lightly as he stepped into view.

“Oh! Good evening, Hades,” she said as a smile quickly obscured the downcast look that Hades caught just moments before. “Do you need something?”

That her first response to his greeting was to ask if he needed something…

“No, I just saw you and thought I should say hello.”

Though there was a slight flush on her face and the slightest hint of a slur in her voice, she didn’t _look_ like she’d just drank an entire bottle of mead by herself. He wondered if this could be a benefit (or curse?) of being Hydaelyn’s Chosen. Or perhaps she could just… _drink._

“Ah. Do you like mead? Want to have a drink?” she asked cheerily, gesturing for him to sit.

Hades nodded and took a seat across from her. “So, two bottles of mead,” he said casually as she poured a generous helping into a glass and pushed it toward him.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said with a laugh. As she had given him the sole glass on the table, she held up the bottle. “Cheers, Hades.”

He clinked his glass against the bottle’s lip. “Cheers.”

There was something intriguingly raw about the sight of her drinking directly out of the bottle.

To no surprise, it turned out the mead wasn’t particularly good—he wasn't sure, though, if he was simply biased by all his time spent as emperors with access to the highest quality wines and spirits. The only redeeming thing about this mead was that it was very strong.

“I doubt anything good could drive you to drink nearly two bottles of subpar mead,” said Hades when she wrinkled her nose at the taste. “Something troubling you, hero?”

Predictably, she waved his question away and raised the bottle for another swig. “It’s been a long w—”

But he didn’t hear the rest of her sentence as a piercing, stabbing pain dug through his head—he’d thought he was rid of the Echo after completing Hydaelyn’s request but the twisting pain told him otherwise—

_Annaiette paced back and forth in her room with her head in her hands, and from what little Hades could see of her face, she was terribly conflicted about something—eventually she stopped and squatted down, huddling into a ball as she let out a frustrated groan._

“ _I shouldn’t go—I shouldn’t—” she muttered under her breath, and it sounded as though she was on the verge of tears._

_She curled in tighter and let out another long groan of frustration, and for a few minutes she stayed in that position, letting out intermittent tearful whimpers as she tapped her head with her fists._

_Soon she fell silent. And after a few motionless moments, she suddenly stood up, resolve etched on her face._

“ _Sod it—sod it all! I’m going,” she growled through her teeth as she slowly rose a few ilms off the floor, the telltale glow of teleportation magicks wrapping around her._

_Her room in the Pendants fell away, replaced by a sight he half-expected but was somehow surprising nonetheless—_

_The Macarenses Angle rose up around them, lit by the undulating light of the Tempest._

_Annaiette stood motionless as she gazed up into his recreation of Amaurot. And slowly—slowly—she let out a quivering breath._

_The Echo had previously imparted only the visual and the auditory, but now—somehow now he felt the depths of her anguish cutting through his very soul._

_She stood that way for what felt like an eternity, the sorrow and pain building with each moment—_

_With another shaky breath, she started walking._

_With a mixture of awe and despair, she looked up at the buildings towering above them as she made her way from the Macarenses Angle, and Hades could see glimmers of recognition in her eyes—a recognition colored by a pain unknown to her during her first visit there. She paused when a pair of Amaurotines walked past, speaking in hushed tones about the coming End—her eyes lingered on them for one moment of longing and regret before she tore her eyes away and continued on toward the Polyleritae District._

_She stopped when she reached the Bureau of the Architect and stared at the doors, her breath rattling as she wrestled with something in her mind. But she took a deep breath and turned away._

“ _Hythlodaeus probably isn’t here,” she muttered. There was something strained in her voice—she was pushing back tears—_

_It seemed she didn’t care to look at the Hall of Rhetoric—Athena never did care much for it—and instead made her way up toward the Capitol. She took another deep breath when she reached the top landing, staring up at the building looming over her. Slowly she turned her eyes back down toward the massive doors leading into the Capitol, and for a moment Hades wondered if she was considering going inside._

“ _Everything is where it should be,” she murmured softly._

_A strangled sob escaped her, and covered her face with her hands._

“ _I thought coming would help but I still can’t…Why is the End so vivid but nothing else?” she choked as she struggled to stifle her sobs. “Where did I live? Where did Hades live?”_

_But it was too much for her to contain; though she was silent, her shoulders shook with her sobs and tears rolled down her cheeks._

_Pain gripped Hades’ heart in tandem with hers as she wept in the shadow of the Capitol._

_When her tears were spent and her sobs calmed, she wiped her face on her sleeve and exhaled slowly. “At least I know where the Bureau is…”_

_A horror filled Hades as she started walking toward the only Bureau she could have meant—the Bureau of the Conservator. It wasn’t going to be good—it wasn’t going to be good and he desperately wished he could reach out—to tell her not to go—_

_But here in this vision, it had already come to pass—he could only watch helplessly as she approached the block where the Bureau once stood…_

“ _Oh.”_

_Annaiette stopped._

_She let out a slow, ragged breath._

_And slowly, her legs failed her and she sank down to her knees._

_Where the Bureau once stood—where the Bureau of the Conservator_ should _have stood—there was only an empty space tiled over with the same slabs that made up the avenue before it. It was one of the only buildings he hadn’t recreated; after Athena left the Convocation—after she rebuffed him that day on the mountain after the End—after the world was Sundered and he thought her lost—_

 _Though he had been able to bear recreating his lost home in a probably perhaps_ maybe _misguided attempt to cope with the pain of its loss, the Bureau of the Conservator…_

_He hadn’t been able to bear looking at it._

_Annaiette nodded to herself, her head bowed. He caught her mouthing words, and he only just heard a faint whisper—_

“ _That’s fair…”_

_She turned her eyes up to gaze into the empty space—the regret and the sorrow and the guilt flared unbearably within her—and after an eternity in this moment, she tore her eyes away._

_Under the weight of this both new and ancient regret, she exhaled and pulled herself onto her feet._

_Hades didn’t know where she could be headed now, only that she seemed one small nudge away from toppling over as she plodded away. And indeed, she didn’t get very far before she tripped over her own feet, yelping in surprise as she tumbled down to the ground. The air was knocked out of her when she hit—she gasped and curled up there on the ground, letting out small sobs of pain and grief both as she covered her face with her balled-up fists. She made no move to get up, and her sobs only grew louder despite her great efforts to keep a hold of herself._

_But eventually something within her broke—_

_Her control slipped finally slipped, and from her came a heartbreaking wail that rent the air and rent Hades’ soul in turn—_

_And Annaiette lay there, the sounds of her weeping echoing throughout the empty, false city at the bottom of the ocean._

Hades blinked when he found himself back in the Crystarium, sitting across from a bewildered Annaiette with the mead bottle halfway up to her mouth.

“I didn’t think you’d still have the Echo,” she said in surprise. She set the mead bottle down and shifted uncomfortably in her seat, her smile faltering. “Erm…what did you see?”

For a fleeting moment, Hades wondered if it was better to lie. But there was no way to convincingly lie about an experience with the Echo—least not with Annaiette—and after another moment’s thought, neither did he think it was appropriate to do so; what he saw in her had been heartbreaking, and he felt it was wrong to just leave it at that…

“You went to the Tempest. To Amaurot.”

Her face fell, and he could see her jaw muscles clenching and unclenching as she considered his words. Wordlessly, she averted her eyes from his and took a too-long swig from the bottle—while she didn’t appear upset, she certainly looked embarrassed and was carefully avoiding his gaze.

“I did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: long boi gets a vision**
> 
> i wanted to draw two sketches for this chapter but i am like real tired D: the holidays are tiring even though my family is not crazy or anything
> 
> OH YEAH if you want to join a fun discord with people who love the rat man and will aggressively love _you_ , check this one out: <https://discord.gg/xqc2Ut5>


	5. Chapter 5

“I did.”

Annaiette’s face, previously only slightly flushed by alcohol, was now distinctly red.

“Do you want...I think we should talk about it,” Hades said gently. Annaiette shook her head and gave him what she probably thought passed for a nonchalant, unbothered smile. It was certainly _not_ nonchalant, nor was it unbothered—she was very clearly anxious to change the subject or make an escape.

“I’m fine. Really. I shouldn’t have gone in the first place.” Her words were cool and casual, but everything else about her was not.

“I don’t think it unreasonable to have some desire to see it,” said Hades.

The smile on her face faltered. It was obvious she was holding back tears as best she could.

“It’s fine—it’s fine!” she said hastily as she forced laugh. “Don’t worry about me, it’s nothing I can’t handle.” And as though to reinforce this thought, she smiled a little wider.

Hades furrowed his brow, not quite out of annoyance but out of exasperation and concern. Her smile was not convincing at all, and in fact, she was the very picture of unease. This was not the first time he had received this song and dance from Annaiette; this time, though, he had undeniable evidence that she was most certainly _not_ as fine as she made herself out to be. It was not lost on him that she made quite the effort to ensure his wellbeing— _him_ , the Ascian who slaughtered millions in the name of Zodiark—while simultaneously and so obstinately refusing to allow anyone to ensure hers.

“Annaiette.”

Her eyes darted back and forth nervously at the sound of her name, and he was sure she would soon make an excuse to leave at the first opportunity.

“I should—”

There it was.

“Annaiette, wait,” he interrupted before she could get to her feet. “Please.”

She stared wide-eyed at him for a moment before exhaling, the tension slowly leaving her shoulders in time with her breath. The unease on her face was replaced by a glum resignation, and she looked to him as though awaiting judgment.

“When you pulled me back, you said we would stand _together_. Not stand whilst the Warrior of Light carries everyone on her back,” said Hades. He felt the smallest measure of frustration, but it was enough to take hold of his tongue and before he could stop himself, he added, “Do you remember the last time you tried to take on more than you could handle? It nearly killed you. _I_ nearly killed you.” 

Inwardly he cringed at this misstep; they had both been quite careful about avoiding talk of that less-than-pleasant time where the Exarch had almost died, and her friends had almost died, and _she_ almost died, and Hades _actually_ died. But fortunately she didn’t seem angry—only sadder somehow as she let out a long, heavy sigh. 

But still she said nothing.

“I won’t force you to talk about it—not that I could,” Hades said, his expression softening. “If you don’t wish to talk to me, then surely your friends would be more than happy to lend an ear.”

He could almost see the churn of her thoughts in her head as she sat there, her eyes down toward the tabletop.

Another heavy sigh. A nod.

“Let’s go before I start crying and make a fool of myself.”

An odd sort of relief filled him as Annaiette got to her feet and dumped a handful of gil on the table. He was momentarily nonplussed, though, when she took the mead bottle in one hand and the cold bream in the other—she stood there, looking to him expectantly with the bream just sitting in the palm of her hand. The sight of it was so ridiculous that he couldn’t stifle an incredulous laugh.

A perplexed smile crossed her face—a genuine smile this time. “What? I paid for this,” she said, brandishing the fish at him as though that somehow made things clearer. It didn’t, of course, and only made him laugh again.

“Far be it from me to keep a woman from her rightful fish,” said Hades wryly as he stood up from his seat.

“That’s right,” Annaiette said with a solemn nod before turning for the stairs. 

The only indication that she might have been the slightest bit inebriated was how she very carefully took each step down from the deck of the Wandering Stairs. She was also very quickly striding toward the Pendants—faster than her usual pace—and Hades wondered if this was somehow a side effect of the alcohol or if she was merely eager to be out of public view. Her level of inebriation did become clearer, however, when she led him to her room, ushered him inside, shut the door, put the fish and mead on the table, and clumsily sank into a chair with her head in her hands.

“You can have the fish if you want,” she murmured through her hands. “It’s good.”

Hades glanced at the hardly-eaten bream on the tabletop. “I wouldn’t want to deny you your fish after you went through all the trouble of bringing it here.”

“We can share.”

“Truly, I wouldn’t dare come between you and your fish,” said Hades as he took a seat in a chair beside her, still eyeing the bream. It didn’t look appetizing at all.

She let out a noncommittal grunt in reply.

A silence fell between them—they were here because Hades had wanted to _talk about it_ , but now that it was real, he hadn’t any idea how to start. There were so, so many things they both needed to talk about, and absolutely zero good ways to casually bring them up in conversation. How, exactly, would one breach the topic of The Complete Destruction of the World They Once Knew just right then with no preamble?

Though he supposed that starting with some basic information was as good a preamble as any.

“When did you go to the Tempest?”

Her chest and shoulders visibly rose as she took a deep breath, held it in for a few moments, and quietly let it out. She didn’t remove her hands from her face.

“A couple weeks ago.” 

Her lips moved as though she wished to say more, but no words came and she instead pursed them shut.

So she had been musing over this for weeks now...

A thousand thousand apologies filled him, seeping through the cracks in his mind—

“ _I’m sorry_ ” tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop himself, but as soon as the words left him he felt a pang of guilt—

Annaiette lowered her hands and concern appeared on her face, Hades mentally kicked himself for misspeaking again. He’d never been so terrible at holding his tongue before—this never happened with Elidibus and Lahabrea—but now here with Annaiette and with her familiar soul and _without Zodiark_ …

“It’s all right,” she said, the corner of her eyes crinkling with a smile—a forced one, but a smile nonetheless. He frowned.

“Annaiette. It clearly isn’t.”

She sighed again and turned away. There was an empty bowl on the table and she absently pressed on the rim to make it wobble. 

Hades could see the incredible weight in her soul. He could _feel_ it. And he didn’t know what to say—  
_he didn’t know what to say_ —

Another sigh, and she opened her mouth to speak. 

“All I remember is the _sound_. The beasts. How everything crumbled.” She bowed her head, and Hades caught the glint of a tear as it fell from her face. “The good things are hazy. I want to remember the good things but I...I can’t.” She turned to look at him with tears in her eyes. “Did you remove those? Did you erase them when you were erasing yourself?”

His breath hitched in his chest in surprise—there was a hint of a bite in her voice. “No, of course not!” he said. “I would never take those memories from you. Not even if you were another—not even if you weren’t _you_.”

“Not even if I wasn’t me…” she said softly, as though skeptical of his words. Her face suddenly screwed up in her struggle to hold back her tears. “ _I_ don’t even know who I am. And for some _silly_ reason I thought going there would help. That if I could just remember something as simple as my own home, then maybe I’d feel like something more than a stack of Warriors of Light with awful Amaurot memories tacked on.”

Annaiette slumped over the tabletop, resting her chin on her forearm as she poked the rim of the bowl. 

For a short while, the only sound that could be heard was that of the bowl wobbling on the table.

The guilt only gripped Hades further and he had to make a marked effort to not dissolve into a blithering pile of apologies.

“It’s not silly,” he said finally, once he got himself under control. “It’s...it’s quite a lot. You’ve had, what, a mere moon to come to terms with it all? It would be difficult for anyone.” He paused a moment, and hoped his next words wouldn’t come off poorly. “It was for me.”

She stopped poking the bowl and shifted her head on her arm so she could look at him. He could see tears glistening in her eyes—her face was strained—her body tensed—

A strangled sob left her.

“It was all my fault,” she choked. “I was a fool—we would have all died if I had my way, and then I—and we were desperate, and—”

She buried her face in the crook her elbow.

“And I summoned Hydaelyn—”

  
  


That guilt he could see in her trembling body, in her trembling soul—it was that selfsame guilt that had weighed _him_ down since the downfall of their home. 

There were no words that could possibly ease it. 

He and Lahabrea and Elidibus exhausted all the words in existence and no words— _none—_ could so much as touch the unfathomable weight of their regret.

  
  


So wordlessly, he shifted his chair closer and hesitantly wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

He felt her almost recoil under his arms as though his touch had burned her—quickly he released her as he leaned back to make distance and opened his mouth to apologize—

But he felt arms snaking under his. 

Fingers on his back, tightening over the fabric of his shirt. 

A head pressed into his shoulder and the warmth of tears.

Quivering arms tightening around him.

A soul, crying out like his a thousand thousand years ago—

A soul pressing against his.

  
  
  
  
  
  


There were no words. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: congrat ur the 14th haha ur not exempt from the crushing guilt**
> 
> is a bit short again but this seemed like a nice place to stop. thanks all for reading!
> 
> if you want to join a discord with some fic authors who are honestly some really cool people, check out the [book club](https://discord.gg/xqc2Ut5)! (this link shouldn't expire so DM me if it's not working)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CW: The illustration at the end of the chapter has blood.** It's not gory at all but it's still blood and if you're at all squicked by it, you can read the chapter without the illustration on my tumblr here: <https://did-you-reboot.tumblr.com/post/190232722312/>

_In this barren land, here in the end, Hades stood before Zodiark at the edge of the darkness._

_Under His glow, twelve bodies lay scattered around him._

_They were silent. They were unmoving._

_They were dead._

_Hades looked about in search of the one who had killed his brethren but found none in this barren land. He turned to Zodiark, and though he felt fear he also wanted to know_ **_why_** _._

_Zodiark let out a piercing keening sound—not one of explanation but one of desperation._

_Hades wheeled around and where there had once been nothing, Hydaelyn stood aglow on the horizon. And with the Light of Hydaelyn behind her, a dark figure approached —_

_Athena approached._

_She limped forward clutching her side and his heart wrenched—her face was tearstained and screwed up in pain and she held up a hand to him, not to kill but to plead—_

_She reached to him to plead for help—_

_Hades tried to extend a hand but his body felt as lead and he couldn't move quickly enough—her eyes looked to his as she reached for him and in that infinitesimal moment when their eyes met, the light left her eyes and her body and her soul and she fell forward into a lifeless heap—_

_The Light of Hydaelyn dissolved away._

_But still Zodiark keened. Even in the absence of His two mortal enemies He still cried out for help._

_Hades felt His cries—_

_Hades felt His cries on the surface of his soul—_

_Hades felt His cries seeping into him, deeper—_

  
  


Hades felt His cries and woke, covered in sweat in the light of the early dawn.

His heart was pounding within him as he put a hand to his chest, feeling for some lingering trace of His presence despite the futility of the act. He could hear his pulse in his ears, wild and frantic, and his shallow breaths came in ragged bursts as his eyes darted back and forth across the room in search of the barren wastes—in search of the bodies of his brethren—in search of _Zodiark_ —

And slowly, when it finally sank in that there was no barren waste, no dead bodies, and _especially_ no Zodiark, his heart calmed and his breaths calmed and he sat silently on the bed.

He put a hand over the dark, scarred skin of his stomach.

A horrifying thought emerged.

Had Annaiette’s killing blow not been enough to completely tear him from Zodiark’s influence?

That he felt this fear and doubt as fully as he did upon his return provided a modicum of relief; surely that meant that he remained free of Zodiark’s grasp? The dream—the dead bodies, the keening, the cries for help—they were all nothing more than a classic, run-of-the-mill, mundane nightmare. No ancient primals involved—just a nicely stressful experience created by his own paranoid mind. 

He was not unfamiliar with nightmares; after the End, it was years before he’d gone a night without them.

The solitude of the room felt somehow loud and overbearing.

As he looked numbly out the window—looking at whatever wasn’t _here,_ which happened to be an overcast sky—his thoughts turned to Annaiette. Last night it felt as though she had wept a thousand thousand years worth of tears; and when she could cry no more, exhaustion took her and coupled with the alcohol, she‘d been only barely coherent. After helping her into bed and ensuring she’d not choke in the unlikely event that she vomited, he had wrestled with himself over whether he should stay or leave.

In the end, he decided to leave. To allow her some space, he tried to tell himself.

But in his heart his cowardice was clear. There was a deep ache in his heart at the sight and feel of her soul but there was an even deeper fear underneath. And this fear, as it was when he first realized who she was, still weighed heavily within him:

She knew—she _knew_ what he did. 

And he feared she would be disgusted. 

He feared she was only just tolerating him—that soon it would give and that soon she would make her true opinion of him known. 

He exhaled sharply and threw the sheets off in frustration as he swung his legs off the bed. He'd held office in the Convocation of Fourteen and built two entire empires, and here he was cowering in bed. There were _things_ to get done and he was going to _get them done_ , because he was Emet-Selch and that is and always has been what Emet-Selch did. When things needed to be done—when nobody else could—Emet-Selch got it done. That is how it had been for millennia, and that is how it would continue to be.

And as he washed up and got ready for the day, he carefully ignored the loud thought clamoring in his head:

He may have been Emet-Selch in the past but this mockery of a man was no longer him.

* * *

When Hades arrived at the control room of the Emperor’s Throne, he found the Exarch and Annaiette already there and somehow it felt as though they’d been waiting for him. Annaiette looked none the worse for wear apart from the now-constant weariness in her eyes, and she raised a hand in greeting with a somewhat hesitant smile.

“Good morning,” she said, and he could hear the slight hesitation in her voice.

“It’s rare to see you in the control room this early,” he said with a hint of cheek. “To what do I owe this pleasure, hero?” 

He was pleased to see that Annaiette appeared genuinely heartened by his words. The Exarch, though, was significantly less so.

“You said yesterday that you wanted to examine the damage to the Tower yourself,” said the Exarch, his ears ever so slightly tilted back. “Annaiette stopped by this morning so I asked her thoughts on the matter.”

“We can go today if you like,” she said brightly. “It’s no trouble at all.”

Hades raised his eyebrows in slight surprise—he hadn’t expected to have the opportunity to go down so soon. “If you’re willing, then who am I to say no?” he said with a wide-armed, facetious shrug. She laughed.

“Good. I need to get some things first, though. It won’t take long,” she said before nodding to the Exarch and striding out of the control room.

“And will you be joining us on this little adventure today, Exarch?” Hades asked once she was gone. One of the Exarch’s ears visibly twitched and he bristled slightly—Hades wasn’t sure what was wrong with what he said but it seemed the Exarch was less than pleased about it. Or perhaps the Exarch had a particularly bad morning.

“I will, in fact,” the Exarch said standoffishly, his ears nearly flat on his head now. He carefully kept his gaze averted from Hades.

Whatever it was, Hades seemed to have touched a nerve. 

But the Exarch didn’t say a word more and Hades didn’t care to pry, so he busied himself with gathering the relevant diagrams and documents that they would need to assess the damage. Would that the Tower’s remaining management nodes were functioning correctly...There were a good many that still worked but they were all somewhat unstable due to the inexorable ravages of time. He didn’t want to risk losing any data due to their unreliable behavior and so he opted for the more primitive method of writing things down on paper.

It wasn’t long before Hades and the Exarch finished gathering what they needed—diagrams and journals and a satchel of tools just in case. The Exarch remained aloof so Hades ignored him and summoned an exploded view of the systems they meant to examine. He had already committed the necessary information to memory but the exploded view gave him something other than the Exarch to look at.

When Annaiette arrived—interestingly, with Alisaie in tow—the pair hesitated at the door, clearly baffled by the palpable tension in the room.

“Er—I’m back,” Annaiette said, eyeing the Exarch and Hades nervously.

Her words broke the tension of the control room, and though Hades hadn’t been terribly bothered by whatever he’d done to bother the Exarch, he found that both he and the Exarch visibly relaxed.

It appeared that Annaiette had gone to fetch both Alisaie and weaponry; she held a slender gunblade in her hand and extended its handle and a bandolier of cartridges to Hades. “Take these. We can handle whatever comes but better safe than sorry. I charged the cartridges for you.” 

The blade looked to be new or nearly so and had a length and shape similar to a Garlean gunblade. He gave it a slow, careful twirl and found it well-balanced and the components well-oiled, and it felt quite comfortable in his grip. It had been many years since the last time he’d bothered to hold any blades larger than a knife—it was an old but familiar feeling, and he found it somehow soothing. The bandolier, too, was soothing in its own way: he remained agonizingly bereft of the ability to manipulate aether and perform any magicks, but the feel of Annaiette’s aether in the charged cartridges somehow filled a small part of that void.

“Do try not to hurt yourself, Emet-Selch,” said Alisaie with a smirk as he took the blade and bandolier.

Hades raised his eyebrows at the cheek—Thancred must be rubbing off on her. “I make no guarantees,” he said, smirking in turn as he put the bandolier on. He almost let slip a joke about not being able to shoot a gun in his old age but quickly caught himself; he’d already somehow irritated the Exarch today, and making a joke about shooting guns in his presence was _perhaps_ in poor taste.

“If everyone’s ready, then let’s go,” said Annaiette. She looked to the Exarch with a smile. “Lead the way, G’raha.”

It seemed the Exarch’s sour mood was only for Hades; as they made their way down into the Tower’s depths, Annaiette and a cheerful Exarch walked in front making idle conversation about something or other that Hades didn’t care about, whilst Hades and Alisaie trailed a few yalms back. Alisaie walked slightly behind him, and Hades had the distinct feeling that he was being watched.

“Watching to make sure I don’t cause trouble, are you?” he eventually called over his shoulder to Alisaie. “If I’d known earlier, I would have planned something. Apologies for being a terrible bore.”

Alisaie scoffed and fell in step with him.

“That’s not why I’m here—not that you could,” she said, and when Hades peered down at her he caught a hint of a smile on her face. He smirked.

“You’d be surprised what an old man can get up to,” he said airily. “Why _are_ you here, then? Sudden interest in Allagan technology? You don’t strike me as the scholarly type.”

“No, that would be my brother,” she replied with a wry smile. “I just happened to be in the Crystarium and Annaiette said there might be monsters that needed fighting. She thought I’d enjoy it.”

“Ah, violence then.”

Alisaie let out a snort of amusement but didn’t say anything to the contrary. He wan’t quite sure that he believed her but it didn’t feel worth the effort to pry.

The further down they went, the dead bodies of Allagan constructs and their broken enclosures became more frequent. The constructs appeared recently killed; those with organic forms were in the early stages of decomposition, with fragments of drones and clockwork knights strewn around them. Though Annaiette appeared perfectly relaxed, he made sure not to get too comfortable himself—the Allagans had thousands and thousands of constructs squirreled away in this Tower and while he hadn’t given them even an onze of thought in the past, he was now very fragile and very mortal and he wasn’t terribly keen on returning from oblivion only to be quickly sent back by some Allagan monstrosity.

While earlier Annaiette and the Exarch had been walking very casually, the Exarch turned to lead them down a corridor toward the first site they were to examine and Annaiette’s posture perceptibly straightened. At first Hades supposed that this particular area must be new to her, but when they emerged into the adjacent chamber, it became imminently clear why she was now on her guard.

The damaged section they meant to investigate, a data relay that was intermittently sending corrupted signals, was immediately obvious there in the back of the chamber, with cracked and misshapen paneling falling away from the wall. What was _also_ immediately obvious were the angry Allagan beasts in containment units lining the room, slavering at the sight of them. Though the containment units appeared in good shape, there were a number of shattered and empty ones in the damaged section’s immediate vicinity.

It was now clear why the Warrior of Light thought it prudent to bring Alisaie along.

“Do what you need to do quickly,” said Annaiette as they made their way to the back of the chamber. Her voice was serious, commanding, and it sent a shiver down Hades’ spine. It reminded him of days past, when the world was whole and some debacle in Amaurot required the aid of the Bureau of the Conservator.

It reminded him of the unflappable Conservator in command of her teams.

The Exarch began rummaging in his satchel, presumably to find the blueprint, but Hades didn’t need it, not yet. He pried the damaged paneling open as gently as he could to reveal the enormous device within. A veritable spaghetti of thick cabling extended from either side of it, and he could see some of the cables’ connections to the device body were misshapen as though by heat. When he pulled the access panel from the front of the device, the story of this damage slowly came together: a long crack spanned the body of the coolant circulation unit, and the bottom of the unit was discolored by a gunk that time had rendered a disgusting brownish-black—likely coolant residue. That the device was still partially functioning meant that its controller successfully put the device in low-power mode, but some of the components must be too damaged to send valid signals...

The muffled rumble of growls was beginning to fill the room, along with the heavy thuds of limbs against glass.

“Hurry if you can, Hades. Alisaie, make ready,” came Annaiette’s voice. She was cool and calm but there was urgency in her words.

Hades looked over his shoulder to the Exarch, who had the blueprint of the device unrolled. “I’m going to tell you which components appear damaged. Mark them,” he said, and the Exarch nodded.

The growling and the thudding grew more and more frenzied as Hades called out the damaged components.

And just as he was contorting himself to get a good look at a board in the back, he heard the sound of glass shattering, of the guttural roar of the now-free creature—

Of Annaiette and Alisaie meeting it, fighting it—

Hades heard the Exarch drop the blueprint and satchel so as to join in, and just as he pulled himself out of the crevice he had shoved himself in, he heard and saw more and more beasts bursting out of their containment units—Annaiette yelled, not out of fear but as a battle cry—dark spikes shot out of the floor and beams of energy rained down from the air and until each creature had eyes for only her—

But Alisaie’s magicks were not enough to quickly down the beasts, and there were so many— _where had they even come from_ —that even with the Exarch’s healing magicks, Annaiette would soon be overwhelmed. They needed to kill them quickly but Alisaie couldn’t do enough on her own and the Exarch was busy keeping Annaiette alive—if Annaiette could direct her energies to killing them rather than preventing them from attacking everyone else...

Annaiette wouldn’t have given him the sword if she didn’t think him capable.

Magicks or not, within him was the skill built over the eons of his existence.

He was Emet-Selch. He was capable.

He could only hope that his body would be able to keep up.

He pulled the sword from his back and loaded the gunblade, and without another thought he leapt forward, running around the outer perimeter of the horde—he heard the Exarch and Alisaie make noises of concern but they couldn’t speak in the midst of their casting. Annaiette caught sight of him as he neared and she shot him a look of questioning dismay as she sidestepped an enormous claw and parried another—

“You’re stronger than me—you kill them and I’ll hold their attention!” Hades called as he raised his blade toward the nearest beast. 

Annaiette opened her mouth in protest.

He fired.

And he fired once more.

In the moment that the beasts acknowledged his presence, she made a split-second decision and raised a hand toward him—dark red wisps spun from her and into him and soon he felt the ire of the beasts upon him—with a yell he fired once more and spun, slicing at the legs of the beasts to tell them that _he_ was the one they should care about. A claw was descending toward him and he parried it—the impact jolted his entire body despite the redirection, and quickly he redoubled his grip on the sword as he dodged another claw by mere ilms. He could see the movement of aether clearly—his current abilities likely augmented by the Echo—and it was by this skill that he spun and weaved away from the claws and teeth of the horde in the midst of Annaiette’s rampage with a peculiar shadow alongside her—

But his body was too weak to sustain the pace—he saw beasts falling left and right to Annaiette and Alisaie and but he was already wearing down—soon a claw caught him on the shoulder—and another on his off hand as he spun and reloaded—Annaiette was casting shields around him as she cleaved through the creatures and the Exarch was quite graciously keeping him alive with his healing magicks, but it wasn’t enough to prop up this twig of a body—

A pillar of light erupted down into the quickly weakening beasts—an explosion followed and dropped nearly the entire horde until only two were doggedly clinging to life. He fired on one and in that split second he could see the aether of the other as it began to swipe—his body had reached its limit and time slowed to a crawl as though to ensure he would see in full clarity the approaching death from this battering ram of a limb—

With the last of his strength he took a step back and braced himself for impact—a moment later his entire world exploded with pain and he was thrown backward—there was a terrific pain in his torso as he struggled to get any measure of breath into his lungs—he could hardly open his eyes the pain was so great—

Another moment later he felt the pulse of healing magicks—his ribs shifted back into place and he felt the deep gouges in his chest closing—the pain fading to a dull throb—

“ _Hades? Hades!_ ”

Annaiette’s voice.

He opened an eye and found her kneeling at his side, with Alisaie and the Exarch hovering a short distance behind her. 

“Are you all right?” Annaiette said breathlessly. There was a real fear in her eyes and in her soul—

—a hesitant press of aether toward his—

It sent a small pang of guilt through his battered chest.

“I perhaps—should have discouraged the Allagans—from making those,” he said with a rasping wheeze. He managed a wry smile from there on the floor.

There was a moment of silence as she processed his words, and he caught Alisaie rolling her eyes behind her.

Slowly, a smile slowly spread across Annaiette’s face as she shook her head in disbelief.

“You did this to yourself, Ser Allagan Emperor Person.”

_Ser Allagan Emperor Person_.

An incredulous laugh escaped him—he grimaced when it sent shooting pains through his body—and for a moment there was silence. But she let out a snort of laughter—so too did Alisaie—and soon even the Exarch couldn’t fully maintain his disapproving frown as the slightest hint of a smile pulled at the corner of his lips.

They laughed—low laughs that crescendoed until they reverberated off the walls of the room—he laughed despite the awful pain in his body—he laughed despite the ever-present guilt looming in the back of his mind—

And there in that chamber, covered with blood and surrounded by dead beasts and with his entire body on fire, Hades laughed more than he ever had in the last ten thousand years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: get fuckin shirked, emet-selch**
> 
> annaiette got a lil overconfident there, thinking there wasn't going to be a horde of monsters wherever they went in the tower
> 
> hades could've just hacked away at the monsters without tanking them but he's got one brain cell these days and annaiette kills them faster anyway
> 
> and of course alisaie has to limit break


	7. Chapter 7

Nearly dying to an Allagan construct had been somehow exhilarating.

Strangely exhilarating though it was, once he was able to stand, he found his body had many opinions regarding everything that had come to pass during this near death experience. And so he found himself sitting against the wall beside the alcove containing the data relay, trying to ignore the throbbing pain as he directed the Crystal Exarch on the remaining damage to look for. It was fortunate the Exarch had taken the time to study the blueprints in advance; if Hades had to stuff himself into the device in his current state, he would need to be dragged out of it by his legs. There wasn’t much more to check, though; if they hadn’t been so rudely interrupted by the constructs then he might have been finished before the situation could have turned into an entire fiasco.

When the Exarch finally extricated himself from the device, he emerged with disheveled hair and sneezed from the ancient dust of five thousand years past.

“I believe that’s the last of the damaged components,” said the Exarch as he dusted his clothing off. He gave Hades a somewhat reproachful look, but hesitated a moment—Hades arched an eyebrow at him when he didn’t speak.

“Something you wish to say, Exarch?”

“I hope fixing this relay is worth nearly dying over it and wasting Annaiette’s efforts to save you.”

The Exarch turned away before he could see the look of mild surprise that came over Hades.

The surprise quickly gave way to another feeling that rippled through him:

Shame.

He tried to shake the feeling off as he painstakingly pulled himself to his feet—this shame wasn’t terribly different than the _other_ colossal shame that forever haunted him. But as he watched Annaiette and Alisaie prodding a dead construct’s massive arms with mild interest, he couldn’t push back the _slightly_ different sort of shame that was slowly pulling at his core.

Fixing the relay was crucial and that was the truth.

But the Exarch words too were naught but the truth.

After everything, Annaiette’s efforts to treat him as though he _hadn’t_ just tried to kill her mere moons ago was remarkable; if she raged within, her outward composure betrayed nothing. It was something he found himself puzzling over in recent days—he, Lahabrea, and Elidibus had disastrously poor control of their emotions following the Sundering, and he thought an Annaiette with partially restored memories would be much the same...

He exhaled slowly but found that the shame and the guilt only wrapped tighter about his chest, soon joined by a muted frustration looming just behind.

As he approached, Annaiette looked away from the enormous claws she was tapping with the flat of a knife—evidently the slightly metallic sound interested her.

“All finished here?” Annaiette asked.

She smiled.

She smiled and the sight of it only served to drag his mind further down into the shame and the guilt.

But he held fast to what control he could and nodded, returning the smile in kind.

As Annaiette turned to lead them back, he felt the Exarch’s and Alisaie’s eyes briefly on him. It was for but a moment, but in them he thought he caught a glimpse of that familiar distaste.

They had every reason and more to feel that way, but somehow now the acceptance of this fact was of no comfort at all.

* * *

Fixing the data relay was proving to be an order of magnitude more difficult than initially expected.

The first problem: the physical tools.

The tools Hades needed to fix the relay were missing from their proper locations or damaged by time’s inexorable march. Those left behind by Garlond Ironworks were either too crude or simply nonexistent, and so he found himself hunched over the control room table, picking apart tools, trying to cannibalize what he could, and making lists of things he needed Annaiette to request of the current Garlond Ironworks or find in Azys Lla. She had already gone back to the Source for the first set of requests, but the difference in the flow of time meant that she had been gone for nearly a week.

The second problem: the non-physical tools.

The control room’s diagnostics indicated that he may need to make some modifications to the controllers in the data relay, as he wasn’t confident that one of the critical boards could be fully repaired due to the heat damage. However, the control room was intended to _control_ the Emperor’s Throne as it was configured, and not intended to modify any of the installed functionality. Ergo, there were no tools to make said modifications. There was, however, a chamber built with the tools in mind to develop these modifications.

The third problem: said chamber dedicated to developing these modifications.

This chamber _also_ required fixing. Fortunately the damage was mostly in the form of loosened or corroded connections, which were easy enough to fix.

If he had the tools and materials to clean and replace the corrosion.

Most of which were missing or broken.

Which he needed to fix.

He let out a hiss of frustration when his fingers slipped for the umpteenth time trying to pry a component out of a broken management node—his fingertips were raw from the work and he shook out his hand to relieve the stinging pain. He’d been trying to avoid using pliers or the like to remove components if he could help it; he had already crushed or otherwise damaged far too many parts and tomestones and he was loath to damage more.

When the stinging pain subsided, he let out a long-suffering sigh and gazed upon the mess of parts surrounding him. He had tried to stay organized but as the week went on and he spiraled deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit that was fixing tools so he could get started on actually fixing the Tower, he grew more and more frustrated by his lack of real progress. And in this moment, with the disarray surrounding him, a flash of this frustration filled him and he threw the broken management node aside with a contemptuous grunt—the node clattered away and scattered parts in its path, which only doubled the burgeoning irritation in him.

His anger overtook him and he swiped at a pile of nonfunctional parts—they scattered with a cacophony of noise and instead of feeling better he only felt more frustrated—

He exhaled sharply to stem the feeling.

He knew better than to let the frustration get to him.  
He _knew_ better.

And yet he still wanted to give in to the base desire to smash everything around him.

But he breathed deep and took hold of the feeling, and when it finally subsided he let out a long sigh. His shoulders and head sagged as he sat there in the midst of the scattered mess as though a massive weight was bearing down upon him.

Even after millennia upon millennia spent watching the Sundered inhabitants of these Shards, it was still—to this day—astonishing that they got anything of value done without Creation magicks. And when he hazily looked at the hands sitting limp in his lap and their agonizing inability to Create...He was sickened by the sight—

But looking at anything else around him only reminded him of that fact—

And the Exarch’s words—so few but so irritatingly, distressingly haunting—

_Was any of this worth Annaiette’s efforts to save him?_

A flash of anger.  
Without a thought, he snatched the nearest thing and flung it against the wall.

_Was fixing the Crystal Tower worth it?_

His throat was tightening.  
He let out a furious yell and hurled a crushed tomestone at the wall and it exploded in a shower of pieces.

_Was **he** worth it?_

A strangled sob.  
He swung once more at another pile and scattered it across the room.

And there on the floor surrounded by ancient scrap with his hands stinging with pain, he howled into this godsforsaken chamber and curled up and cried.

* * *

Hades sat motionless on the floor, wearily regarding his handiwork through the veil of hair hanging over his face.

The scattered parts were now arranged in neat piles in neat rows before him.

When he had finally dragged himself off the floor, the mess he made had elicited such disgust that he spent the next bell gathering all the pieces he had thrown and scattered about the chamber. And so here he sat after cleaning up the mess, irritated with himself for losing control so spectacularly badly. It was fortunate that he’d been alone; he had an image to keep up and it wouldn’t do for the Exarch or Scions—or more worryingly, Annaiette—to see him unraveling any further than they already have. He hated that this continued to happen, though he supposed it was only because he couldn’t simply _sleep_ the bad feelings away.

He shook the thoughts from his head before they could take hold again.

The parts and components now lined up before him were promising; though he still needed some components and tools that he hoped Annaiette would be able to find—or commission from Garlond Ironworks—he was cautiously optimistic that this collection of scrap would be enough to repair this chamber. And with this chamber repaired, he should be able to reconfigure the data relay.

And with the data relay reconfigured, he and the Exarch would have a more functional look at what they would need to do about the systems that Garlond Ironworks spliced into the Crystal Tower. They had recently taken a brief look at the system that made use of Omega’s technology as it was the part most relevant to their goals, and the entire system was completely foreign to both him and the Exarch— _alien_ , he supposed, based on what Annaiette and the Garlond Ironworks journals described. It was incredibly intriguing, but he hadn’t the mental capacity to ponder it while he was in the midst of repairing this chamber. He did know, however, that Omega was why the Exarch’s and Scions’ trips through the Rift did not end in the same disaster as the Allagans’ attempt to open the portal to the Void. And he did know that grasping what they could about Omega’s technology would be the key to creating a stable portal safe enough for Annaiette to bring the Scions’ true bodies through.

Hades had learned to be very, very patient over the thousand thousand years, but mortality had instilled an impatient urgency in him and he deeply wished the repairs would _just be done_. This impatience, though, was intriguing in itself, and he begrudgingly wondered if perhaps this sense of urgency from mortality was why the Sundered could be so prone to aggression...A concept he’d previously understood in theory, but was now quite real to him.

He wasn’t sure what Annaiette’s end goal was—nor was he sure if she even had one other than “stop Zodiark”—but he perhaps foolishly hoped that he might live long enough to see the end.

He knew that in the end, Annaiette wished to stop Zodiark. And he knew that the end of Zodiark meant accepting that the plan he has worked so hard for over the untold eons was a failure. The return of their people was something he had intensely desired for all those eons, but without Zodiark whispering into his soul and with the despair from the knowledge that his plan might not have even worked in the end, the plan felt so wildly discordant within him that it was difficult to think about even if it was deemed a failure.

A long sigh left his chest.

“Methinks the sighs do not become thee, Emet-Selch.”

Hades looked over his shoulder to find a smiling Urianger in the doorway. Urianger didn’t wait for him to respond and entered the chamber, looking over the neat piles of parts with interest. “Thou hast been quite productive, it seems,” he said.

“That is one way to put it. The real repairs begin once our hero returns, hopefully with parts and tools,” Hades replied wryly without getting up. It seemed that Urianger meant to linger for a while—he sat down on the floor beside him. Perhaps at Annaiette’s behest.

“Would that mine own work similarly proceedeth apace,” Urianger said as he examined the disassembled remains of a node. “To send a soul through the Rift is no small task. Though thou knowest this well, I’m certain.”

Urianger had taken it upon himself to do further studies on souls and the Rift, and Hades was not surprised in the least that he’d not learned much of use.

“Indeed,” Hades said. “It’s why I took the Exarch. Though it seems that after all that trouble, he wasn’t even the one holding the knowledge of the Rift.”

Urianger didn’t respond to this—a sore subject for the Scions, perhaps—and instead he pulled out a small cloth bundle and unwrapped it to reveal a pair of pastries. “I noticed thine absence since morn and thought a snack would do us both a modicum of good—Annaiette expressed concern that I, too, failest to consider mine meals in recent days.” He chuckled and passed Hades a pastry.

They sat there in silence as they ate, and though it did feel somewhat awkward because they hadn’t much else to talk about, Hades felt just the slightest bit glad for the company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: sometimes you just gotta throw some shit**
> 
> is kinda short even though it took forever :( my brain has caught up with me and was rebelling and doing the mental equivalent of lying on the floor


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 5.2 is almost here and I diverge further and further from canon
> 
> So uh. Yeap. Here there be AU now, I guess hahaha

_She couldn’t see._

_A terrible whiteness was blotting out her vision, and an equally terrible pain was filling the entirety of her weary body—_

_The Light was fracturing her._

_Desperately she tried to pull it back—to keep the leaking Light within—but the effort only brought her to her knees. The Light was seeping through her skin and her mouth and her very soul and she couldn’t hold it in—_

_She coughed and splattered the ground with white._

_And kneeling before her, against the blinding, relentlessly bright skies of the First, was a smirking Emet-Selch—_

_“I shall look forward to seeing you bring the world to its knees, hero.”_

_His words were as poison in her splintering soul—_

_How could he—  
_ _**How could he** —_

_Annaiette tried to raise her fist to strike him—she tried and tried but couldn’t lift her hand—_

With a cry she tried one last time but her arm caught in the sheets—the feeling of constriction lit a panic in her, and her half-woken mind was shrieking at her to get up and fight— _to get up and fight Emet-Selch_ —but her legs, too, were tangled in sheets and she flailed ineffectually in the bed until she was finally conscious enough to stop panicking about corrupted Light—until she was awake enough to feel the dream fading back into the depths of her mind.

Until she was awake enough to examine her surroundings.

Her bed in the Carline Canopy.

Her blankets, now in disarray.

The distinct lack of an Emet-Selch looming over her.

Only her, and the room.

But the calm lasted but a moment—her mind could not resist the inescapable pull of her dream and she could not stop it from replaying in her mind.

Tasting copper mixed with the burning, searing despair of tainted Light.

Clutching the precipice of sanity.

Emet-Selch standing over her.

Taunting her.

She curled up on her side as nausea swept over her, and she retched as the room swayed uncontrollably. With a whimper, she clenched her eyes shut and curled up as tightly as she could—this usually helped stem the retching and the swaying.

Eventually the nausea faded.

A glance out the window at the still-dark sky told her she didn’t get more than three bells’ worth of sleep; it was maybe seven bells fewer than she would have liked, but it was better than no sleep at all, she supposed. With a long sigh, she closed her eyes—though she knew sleep would not come to her for the rest of the night (morning?), with her eyes shut she could at least pretend...

More often than not she found her nights plagued by nightmares—usually about the End and after, but sometimes about the awful experiences of Ardbert and all the other lives within her, and sometimes about all that had come to pass during her time on the First. And that meant sporadic nightmares about the tainted Light, or the Exarch, or Emet-Selch...Silently she thanked whoever ought to be thanked—not the Twelve nor Hydaelyn, certainly—that she was here in Gridania and not on the First. Though she had been doing her very best to separate the Emet-Selch that had nearly led her and the First to ruin from the Hades that had _saved_ her from such, after these sorts of nightmares she often couldn’t bear the sight of him. After everything he’d done— _after everything he’d done_ —

She didn’t _remember_ much apart from the feeling—but there was warmth and comfort and familiarity and love even in the memories where he had blotted out his presence—

The feeling was so incredibly, unimaginably dissonant in her mind that at its very worst it felt as though her only hope of relief would be to claw her own brain out of her head.

But right now she _didn’t_ feel the urge to gouge her brains out and instead the unsettling thought of driving a hypothetical knife into her leg briefly came over her. She let out a long groan and buried her head under her pillow, pulling it in tightly. She supposed that this urge was an improvement over wanting to gouge her brains out by virtue of being a less _permanent_ course of action; there were some days where she could not silence the voice within that told her how her life would be a lot less complicated if it had, in fact, ended at any point before now.

A long sigh.

She was staying in Gridania to lower the chances of running into anyone she knew whilst she waited for Cid to finish the tools Hades had requested. It wasn’t often that she spent time in Gridania these days, and she looked like any other Wildwood that lived in the city so it was a safe bet that she’d not be noticed. She felt some guilt about not spending time with Tataru but she didn’t really feel up for socializing; she didn’t even know what person she wanted to be to herself, let alone what person she should be to others. Annaiette, she supposed, but she didn’t know what that meant anymore.

At this thought, it felt as though her mind was separating from her body. With a small whimper, she shut her eyes, clenching her fists and focusing on the feel of her fingers curling into her palms and the feel of the sheets wrapped around her and the feel of her cheek against the pillow over her head—these feelings pulled her back, and for a blessed moment her mind relaxed and she felt solid within her body once more.

Containing the tainted Light felt a somehow lesser task than containing the incredible dissonance now rampant in her mind and body and soul.

She glanced out the window at the dark again. She had already spent far too long here between searching for parts in Azys Lla—Hades requested parts from three different types of nodes which she couldn’t easily tell apart and so she got several and hoped for the best—and waiting for Garlond Ironworks to finish the tools. Cid had mentioned he would be finished today, but showing up at the Ironworks door at some ungodly hour of the night was perhaps not the best nor most polite course of action. She was loath to linger in Revenant’s Toll besides...It only reminded her that she could do naught more to help the Scions than gather parts—even with her fragmented, incomplete memories, she knew with complete confidence that she’d _never_ had an affinity for soulcraft.

Mending, on the other hand...If she had her complete memories, mending the Crystal Tower would have been simple enough with Creation magicks; as it was, the nuance was far, far too hazy in her mind and even with the Light of the Lightwardens, she hadn’t enough aether to mend even the small portions of the Tower that Hades and the Exarch cared about. The complexity of the components was far too great, and without the fine control of aether that she’d once had…

Right now, she was little more than an errand girl—an errand girl and a crude weapon to be swung at the next thing that needed killing.

Regaining a swath of memories of the final days had not changed that.

She pulled the sheets in tighter as she waited for the dawn.

* * *

The Mark Whatever It Was Boilermaster heralded the boiling of the water, and Annaiette watched from the table as Cid busied himself with preparing tea. A basket of fresh rolls from Gridania sat on the table before her.

“You really didn’t have to bring anything,” said Cid, looking over his shoulder with a smile. “But I won’t say no to fresh bread.”

Annaiette waved his words away. “It’s the least I can do for dropping all that work on you so suddenly,” she said lightly. Cid placed a pair of teacups and a teapot on the table—a matching set, which was probably Jessie’s doing—before taking a seat across from her.

“My friend, you’ve asked naught from me after all these years,” said Cid with a laugh as he poured her some tea. “Fixing a few tools is nothing.”

There was a loud, dramatic groan—Annaiette found an exasperated Nero in the doorway and she couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “These pleasantries are such a bore,” he said with an equally dramatic whine. He didn’t wait for a response before taking a seat at the table and helping himself to a bread roll.

Cid shot him a disgruntled glare. “Feel free to show yourself out, then.”

“But I have _questions_ for our dear Warrior of Light, Garlond,” Nero said brightly, holding up a sheaf of papers that Annaiette recognized as the blueprints and instructions that Hades had provided.

“And what would those questions be?” she asked coolly.

Internally, panic.

“Can you not even allow us to have breakfast first?” Cid asked wearily.

Nero held up a finger at him.

“No.”

He took a bite from the roll as he pushed the sheaf toward Annaiette. “Who in the world— _that_ world, obviously—did you get these from?” he asked as he took Cid’s teacup and had a sip—to which Cid let out a heavy, defeated sigh.

“Why? Something strange about them?” Annaiette asked as she took a sip from her own teacup.

Nero’s characteristic grin spread across his face. “Something strange? Only if you find the sheer ingenuity of this hybrid Allagan technology strange. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I should like to know where _you_ did.”

“Oh, I had no idea,” Annaiette laughed, and she deeply hoped she didn’t sound as nervous as she felt. “All this technology is beyond me. I’m just the messenger.”

Nero laughed in turn, and he looked wholly unconvinced by her words. “Oh, you’re a _terrible_ liar. These look almost Garlean, and unless Garlemald and Allag exist in the First—which I _highly_ doubt—there must be something else you’re not telling us.”

”What are you suggesting, then, Nero?” Annaiette asked with a frown. “That I somehow have secret Garlean friends on an entirely different world?”

She did perhaps have a secret Garlean friend on an entirely different world.

“ _Your_ words, Annaiette, not mine,” Nero said, his voice almost singsong. He certainly was in high spirits today. “I do hope you find a way to bridge the worlds, because I should like to meet this person.”

“If I didn't know any better, it sounds like you have a crush. All this tech got you all hot and bothered, has it?” Annaiette laughed, raising her eyebrows.

Internally, her soul was somehow sweating bullets. She didn’t even know that souls could feel sweaty.

Nonetheless, her comment had the desired effect—Nero let out a bark of laughter and relaxed into the back of his chair. “Well. If your certainly-not-Garlean friend has any further requests, do pass them along,” said Nero, sipping Cid’s tea and rather conspicuously _not_ acknowledging her words. “If they’re as interesting as these—” He tapped the sheaf of papers again. “—then _that_ will be payment enough. Don’t you agree, Garlond?”

It was obvious that Cid didn’t want to give in to Nero’s theatrics, but he nodded in agreement. “It’s true, they really were quite fascinating,” he said with an almost helpless smile. “We’ll be happy to have a look at anything else you and yours might need.”

Thankfully, with the talk of the tools finished and Annaiette and Cid returning to the pleasantries he so despised, Nero took his leave with a dramatic sigh—but not before swiping another roll from the basket as he left. Annaiette didn’t linger much longer afterwards, though; she knew Cid always had too much to do, and any more time spent idly on the Source could mean days on the First…

After a pleasant—albeit short—breakfast with Cid that left her feeling quite a bit less awful than the previous night, with her bag packed with the carefully wrapped tools and an assortment of sweets from Gridania, and with an almost comical chain of dead management nodes slung over her shoulder, she concentrated on the pathway to the First and disappeared into the aetheric stream that paved the way back to the Crystarium.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: nero is like _really_ excited**
> 
> my brain was having A Time while i was writing this, mostly flailing about if the story is any good or not lol
> 
> so here i am, continuing to write in defiance of my brain
> 
> take that, brain


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, sooooooo 5.2 was totally a thing. I can still kind of pretend to follow along with canon but now you'll just have to pretend you don't know anything about what 5.2 revealed about certain things~

Hades and the Exarch looked up from the table in the control room when an almighty clattering filled the air.

A mass of Allagan management nodes stumbled into the room, and had Hades not seen Annaiette’s soul glimmering underneath it all, he might have briefly wondered if some ill-conceived Allagan experiment had wandered in. He and the Exarch both leapt to their feet to help, but before either of them could reach her, one of the many management nodes hanging off her caught on the corner of the console nearest the door—there was a small yelp of surprise and she and the pile of nodes crashed to the floor.

“Annaiette!” the Exarch exclaimed.

He was closest and knelt down to dig her out of the mass; soon, Annaiette’s disheveled head popped up out of the pile of nodes, and with the Exarch’s help she clumsily extricated herself from the twine stringing them together. The sight of her eased an ache in Hades’ chest that hadn’t realized was there; it felt as though he hadn’t taken a real, full breath during the three weeks that she had been away.

But as she dusted herself off, Hades furrowed his brow ever so slightly—the embarrassed smile on her face did little to mask the distinct air of unwellness that was evident in her eyes.

“What is all this?” asked the Exarch in confusion.

“I couldn’t tell the management nodes apart and I was having trouble getting the parts out, so I just brought them with me,” Annaiette said with a small chuckle as she began pulling cloth-wrapped bundles from her bag and lining them up on the table. “Garlond Ironworks didn’t seem to have any trouble with your requests,” she said as she busily unwrapped the cloth protecting the tools. “In fact, they enjoyed the job quite a bit.”

“Oh? In what way?” asked Hades, picking up a meter she had unwrapped and turning it over in his hands. The work on the meter was clean, and a quick examination of the inner components revealed no damage that wasn’t already there. Truly the work of skilled Garlean engineers.

“What was it Nero said…? Something about ‘sheer ingenuity of hybrid Allagan technology’ or the like,” she said with another chuckle. “I think he might have been smitten.”

Hades thought back on what he knew of Nero tol Scaeva—or Nero Scaeva now, he supposed—and didn’t feel terribly surprised at this; Gaius’ Tribunus was an incredibly intelligent man perhaps second only to Cid Garlond—and if he knew Nero Scaeva, then he knew Nero would not like the comparison.

“In any case, I can’t help but wonder how he would feel to know that the object of his infatuation just so happens to be his Emperor,” Annaiette continued, grinning. She still didn’t meet his gaze.

“Oh, he’d not be the first,” said Hades with a cheeky smirk that she didn’t see. “I ought to tell you about Midas’ predecessor sometime.”

“And what did you do to toy with this predecessor’s emotions?” asked the Exarch, the corner of his mouth turned up in a skeptical half-smile. Hades had found the Exarch to be much more conversational in recent days, though his words always held the smallest hint of _very much valid_ disdain.

“Oh, the fluttering of his heart whilst we discussed new methodologies for magitek into the long hours of the night,” Hades said wistfully, placing a hand over his heart. “But that is a story for another time.”

The Exarch let out a snort of amusement—he clearly thought Hades joking but it wasn’t _entirely_ in jest: Praedus nan Dalvid had certainly been insufferable at times but Hades had nonetheless quite enjoyed his passion for engineering…

“I want to hear about it sometime. Maybe not now,” Annaiette laughed, looking to him with a curiously placid smile that completely failed to conceal the distress of her soul. “I promised Alisaie I would find her once I got back. Contact me via linkshell if you need anything, or if anything is missing. And have some sweets—they’re from Gridania.”

When the words finished tumbling from her mouth, she hastily took her leave.

Her peculiar behavior gave him pause; Hades glanced to the Exarch and found the selfsame puzzlement on his face. “Do you suppose something happened on the Source?” the Exarch asked, frowning.

Hades exhaled slowly and glanced out the empty doorway. Whatever it was that had happened, it was abundantly clear that it was related to him. And given his current inability to traverse the Rift and cause grief on the Source, he suspected that the cause of her stiff behavior likely involved one of the countless awful things he’d done in the past…

The ache in his chest returned in full force, and he took a shuddering breath as the guilt he had carefully held at bay broke free.

“Emet-Selch?” came the Exarch’s voice.

“Hmm?”

He found the Exarch watching him with a sort of suspicious curiosity.

“What did you do to her?” the Exarch asked, his ears twitching.

“You’ll need to qualify that with _when_ , my dear,” said Hades with a wry smile that he wished would do aught to dam the guilt flooding him. “If you happen to be asking about the past moon, then I’m afraid I don’t know.”

The Exarch bristled at his words but said nothing and instead turned to the tools laying on the table; he’d now suffered Hades’ presence for long enough to know when questioning him was an exercise in futility. “It seems you now have the tools you require—or some of them, in any case,” said the Exarch, picking up a small, tomestone-sized device and examining it. “Where do we go from here?”

His mind latched onto the prospect of work—anything to distract from the thoughts screaming in his head.

“Today you are going to learn how to repair an Allagan device without magicks, Exarch.”

* * *

Hades, Urianger, and the Exarch huddled over a component board, all watching with bated breath as the Exarch’s quivering hands carefully pulled the aetherial connections between components back together with the specialized forceps repaired by the Ironworks. But after hours of work, the Exarch’s hands were anything but steady—the connection fizzled and dissipated and immediately they all let out sighs of disappointment.

“Fret not, Exarch, ‘twas an admirable attempt,” Urianger said kindly as the Exarch slumped back in his chair in frustration. “Perhaps the closest to success than any of us have come.”

Hades rubbed his eyes wearily. Urianger was not wrong; they had been taking it in turns to try and repair that particular connection and thus far the Exarch has come closest to success. The task was more difficult than it ought to be owing to the delicate connection and the imperfect functionality of the tools—Garlond Ironworks had done an admirable job repairing it to the best of their ability, but there was something unavoidably off about its aetherial balance that made things all the more difficult. In Allagan times, a specialized machina would have been responsible for fabricating this component board, but here and now they had no such luxury. Hades was glad that the repair they needed to make was even possible by hand.

“How long have you all been down here?”

He looked up to find Annaiette watching them reproachfully from the doorway with a rectangular, cloth-wrapped bundle in her arms. There was no clock in the room but judging by the furrow of her brow, it must be after sundown.

“I imagine none of you have eaten all day,” she continued without waiting for an answer. She put the bundle on a clear spot on the table and unwrapped it to reveal a stack of three wooden boxes, which she distributed to each of them. The box was warm, and a look inside revealed a large portion of pasta with meat sauce.

“Annaiette, you didn’t need to do this,” the Exarch said with a hint of embarrassment. She raised her eyebrows at him.

“G’raha, it’s two bells past sundown.”

“Ah.”

“Thank you,” Hades said carefully—he couldn’t help the mild anxiety that she might still be out of sorts.

The cheerful but almost forced smile in contrast with her churning soul only confirmed his suspicions.

“Think nothing of it,” she said as she folded the cloth up into a neat square, before giving each of them a facetious, stern look. “Don’t work all night, all right?”

“We shall endeavor to be in bed at a reasonable hour,” said the Exarch, a hint of a laugh in his voice. Annaiette’s gave a small nod of approval as she visibly stifled a laugh.

“See to it that you do.”

And with that, she smiled and took her leave.

Now that they weren’t so intensely focused on their work, Hades found that he was twice—or thrice—as tired and hungry as he initially thought, and the warm pasta was a very welcome meal indeed.

“Though the Warrior of Light remaineth ever thoughtful in her considerations for our wellbeing, a thought doth linger in my mind,” Urianger said suddenly after a few minutes of silent and weary pasta-eating, “Had she arrived to find us already partaken of an evening meal, three servings of pasta would yet remain in her care.”

Hades thought back to the fish she had drunkenly insisted on bringing back from the Wandering Stairs, which he presumed that she eventually ate. Annaiette had never been a wasteful person even before the Sundering, and he never got the impression that she had changed in that regard.

The image of her eating pasta in the middle of the night sprang unbidden in his mind.

“Oh, I’m certain she would have just eaten all of it herself,” he said lightly.

The Exarch let out a laugh after swallowing a mouthful. “I have to admit that I agree with Emet-Selch. I once gave her a basket of sandwiches and was shocked to find that she ate them all in one sitting…”

* * *

Urianger and the Exarch had already taken their leave for the night, but Hades sat there alone in the Demiurgos Chamber with no desire to move. To return to the Pendants subsequently meant sleep, and though he deeply appreciated a long sleep—perhaps more so than anyone—sleep meant the imminent arrival of the next day and it was this fact that inexplicably filled him with dread. Progress on repairs to the Chamber today were very promising and he was even eager to continue on to the next set of tasks—

And yet here he sat. Dreading the rising of the sun.

It was a sort of paralysis with his head somehow numb but simultaneously racing uncontrollably, and it made no difference whether he mentally reprimanded himself for being foolish or pathetically tried to cajole himself into leaving and getting some semblance of rest.

“Hades? What are you still doing here?”

The sound of Annaiette’s voice snapped him out of his daze—he found her peering into the chamber from the doorway, almost as though she happened to be passing by. The chamber wasn’t on the way to anything they cared about with respect to the Crystal Tower repairs so she must have come down just to check.

“I could ask you the same, Annaiette,” he said, smiling wryly.

“Hah. Fair point,” she laughed as she entered and examined all the things laid out on the table. “How are you doing?”

“Progress on the repairs is proceeding quite nicely. If our fortune holds, we can start on the data relay within the next few days.”

She pulled out the chair across from him and sank into it with a muted _whump_. The dim light of the chamber’s standby lighting cast deep shadows over face, and he was struck by how they made her look even more gaunt and weary than usual. Her face and her aether and her soul all radiated an anguish and exhaustion that anybody would find unbearable—Ascians included.

And despite this, she managed a smile.

“That’s great to hear, although I was more asking about _you_ ,” she said.

“What about me?” he asked, and he must have appeared as baffled as he felt because she let out a soft snort of amusement.

“I just wanted to see if you’re all right. That’s all.”

Though Annaiette’s concern should have been heartening, the weight within only grew heavier.

He didn’t feel all right. Nor did he deserve to feel all right. But that wasn’t a discussion he wished to have, nor one worth having at all. Truthfully, he was confused why she was asking at all—she had clearly struggled with his presence earlier, so what, then, was happening now?

“I’m fine.” He managed a cheeky smirk. “Surely you have better things to do in the dead of night than ask after me.”

“Ah, you’re right. How could I have forgotten the midnight tree whispering hours?” she laughed, her voice heavy with sarcasm, and when her laugh died down her face softened. “You should get some rest. And let me know if there’s anything you need.”

Hades watched as she left the room and some deep part of him wanted to reach out and ask her to stay. But he didn’t even know what to do if she did; there were so many things to ask about and yet he could find no suitable words for any of it—the words were lost in the mire of frazzled, confused thoughts running rampant in his mind. But here in the wake of her presence, he at least knew one thing:

He still didn’t understand at all how she could suffer his presence with a smile.

* * *

The confusion weighed heavily upon him for the next few suns.

This in itself was frustrating because it wasn’t aught that was new. Of course she would have conflicting feelings about his presence, and of course her friendliness was simply an attempt at ensuring that tensions among the Exarch and the Scions and himself remained low.

Of course.  
_Of course._

He knew this— _he knew this_ —yet it did nothing to ease the weight in his heart.

He knew this but he couldn’t pull himself out of the fog—it felt like drowning—like suffocating—but he didn’t realize just how bad it was until one afternoon, a deeply horrifying thought came as a whisper in the back of his mind:  
  


_With Zodiark, pushing past these feelings would be so easy.  
  
_

Hades couldn’t stop himself from letting out a noise of dismay—one loud enough to draw the Exarch’s and Urianger’s attention. Urianger peered curiously at the console in front of Hades before giving him a questioning look; fortunately all three of them had been making various noises of dismay the past few days as they wrestled with repairs and configurations, so he was not questioned further. He turned back to the holographic screen of the console and made sure to look busy, but the insidious whisper in his mind left him shaken—

Instead of working, he found himself sitting there, combing over his thoughts and reassuring himself that they were indeed his own.

The fear that he could still be beholden to Him only heightened the utter chaos of the emotions he was struggling to control.

He breathed in slowly.

Breathed out slowly.

It pulled him back just enough to finish the task that had idled on the screen for nearly a bell now. He could hardly think amid the anxieties clamoring in his head, but little by little he drew his focus back to the task at hand. The chamber was very nearly in good-enough working order, and would be such once the last few connections were repaired, so he was busy verifying—or at least attempting to verify—that the Crystal Tower systems were rerouting and reporting reliably.

One upside of all of these repairs, however—apart from getting Annaiette’s friends home, of course— was that the repairs gave him the insight necessary to possibly improve the Exarch’s ability to utilize the magicks of the Tower. The Exarch was astonishingly clumsy with his magicks and it irritated Hades entirely more than it should; that the Scions were on the First _by accident_ was deeply offensive to his sensibilities, especially because said accidents happened to so thoroughly unravel his carefully-laid plans.

He could immediately see, however, where this thread of thought was headed, so when he heard the Exarch and Urianger get up to take their leave for the night, he quickly took the opportunity to preempt it and got to his feet as well.

The Exarch left after a cursory goodbye, but Urianger lingered in the doorway. Hades wondered if he might have forgotten something, but he realized that Urianger was waiting for him.

“Farest thou well, Emet-Selch?” Urianger asked as Hades approached the door. “If I recall, the completion of thy work on this chamber is but a stone’s throw away.”

“Ah. Indeed it is,” Hades replied. He hesitated a moment—Urianger’s demeanor was so casual as they made their way to the Tower’s exit that Hades was on edge, waiting for whatever the true question was—

But none came.

“I look forward to directing our attentions upon the power that driveth Omega,” Urianger said with a thin smile. “‘Tis an incredible opportunity.”

Hades let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding in. He had been so guarded for years upon years upon years that casual conversation was now a foreign concept to him. “I think we’re of similar mind, then,” Hades said tentatively. “I don’t know when I last held such little understanding of a concept.”

“At long last, equal footing with an Ancient,” Urianger chuckled.

All the way until they parted ways at the Dossal Gate, he and Urianger talked about their theories on the aetherial makeup of Omega. Or rather, Urianger talked whilst Hades listened and tried to work out what Urianger might have been digging for. But when his Scion not-quite-friend finally bid him goodbye and disappeared into the evening, he could come up with no suitable explanation for Urianger’s behavior.

He still felt the inexplicable desire to ward off the coming of the next day, and so he found himself sitting at his now-usual spot along the edge of the Crystarium, struggling to tamp down the frustrating dread and anxiety in the pit of his stomach.

“Hades.”

He turned to find Annaiette approaching him—she must have just arrived at the aetheryte from wherever it was she went during the day, and unless she made a habit of wandering the edge of the Crystarium in the late evening, she somehow knew where he had planted himself. Her greatsword was conspicuously absent, and when he thought back on it, he hadn’t seen it in quite a while. Instead, a pair of worn cesti dangled from her belt.

“Annaiette,” he replied. She smiled and stood before him, her arms crossed.

“You do know it’s nearly midnight, right?” she asked.

He didn’t, but he let out a small laugh regardless. “It’s midnight sitting hours, obviously.”

“Ah, of course. Well, since you’re here during the midnight sitting hours,” Annaiette began as she rummaged through her bag, “it seems like a great time to sit and eat.”

Hades watched incredulously when she produced a small bundle containing a few slices of some sort of dense loaf. _Why did she always have food on her person?_

She took notice of his disbelief and gave him a questioning look. “What? It’s cloud banana loaf,” she said, as though it was the type of bread that was the source of the confusion. Her face fell slightly. “You don’t like cloud bananas?”

“What? That’s not—” He took a moment to gather himself. “Not that I’m one to question the Warrior of Light these days, but do you always have food with you?”

“Ah. Well, I have to eat sometime, don’t I?” She held the bundle out to him. “If I’m eating, then you may as well, too. You don’t eat enough these days.”

The smile on Annaiette’s face, the bright words from her lips, the food offered freely—all should have been heartening, reassuring, but instead these only tightened the weight wrapped about his soul.

He didn’t understand this kindness—

“Why are you like this?” he asked softly.

He couldn’t fathom how she could stand to do it—

“Huh? Why am I like what?”

He bowed his head—his chest was tightening—

“Hades? Are you all right?”

Something in him snapped.

“ _How can you even look at me?_ ”

Frustration filled him—frustration filled him and took hold and he found himself on his feet—he didn’t know what to do other than throw something but there was nothing in reach to throw—there was worry in her eyes and she had taken a step back but there was kindness and concern but he could see her soul underneath—

“You _must_ feel a measure of anger! Of disgust! You know what I’ve done!”

His voice was sharp and loud and pained as every single dark thought burst uncontrollably past the dams he had built—

It all came rushing out.

“I don’t know how you can stand to be near! Surely your friends would have gotten rid of me were it not for you!”

His face was hot—his cheeks wet—his heart pounding in the throes of the frustration and anger and desolation bubbling over—he could see the hurt in her eyes but he couldn’t stop the words from coming—

“All I am is a _pathetic_ , broken person that needs to be cared for!”

More words were on the brink of pouring out but were forestalled when Annaiette hissed sharply in pain and dropped the bread—Hades saw her recoiling from her bag as though it had burned her—

There was a flash of black and a rushing sound—something dark and huge blotted out his vision—

He looked up and stumbled backward onto his arse in shock when he found the furious, scarred face of Athena looking down at him with her one good eye.

Her soul looked bizarre, as though Annaiette’s (Athena’s?) soul had somehow stretched itself out between Annaiette’s body and this giant robed figure—

“What do you want us to say, Hades? Do you _want_ to be treated like shite?” she growled, and her enormous Amaurotine form loomed ominously over his comparatively tiny Garlean one—she reached her hand out toward him and he felt a deep, irrational terror that she meant to scatter him into dust—

“Stop! Stop!” Annaiette cried as she leapt up and clung to Athena’s outstretched arm—Athena tried to shake her off as though trying to shake off an insect—on top of the fear, Hades found himself bewildered by what was unfolding before him and his mind could hardly reconcile the sight of Annaiette (Athena?) clinging doggedly onto Athena (Annaiette?) when his sight told him both were the selfsame soul—

“Get off—get off! After everything he’s done, if he wants us to treat him like shite then maybe we should!” Athena snarled—Hades had never seen Athena so angry and it was both surreal and terrifying and the faint glowing seams crisscrossing her face did nothing to allay the feeling—

Hades couldn’t find the words to speak—Athena was still trying to shake Annaiette off and he had no idea what to make of any of it—

Annaiette finally slipped off and fell to the ground with a hard _THUD_ —she gasped in pain as the air was knocked from her lungs and Athena rounded on her instead—

“Stop…please...” Annaiette eked from her throat, holding up a hand as though her tiny Elezen arm could have done aught to stop Athena—

Athena paused as she looked from Annaiette to Hades, and through her scowl Hades could see she was conflicted—

It felt like an eternity that she stood motionless—but finally time returned to them and her face softened and it reminded him of the calm Athena he so knew—

_The Athena he so loved—_

And she let out a long, heavy sigh.

“Don’t try to push me away,” said Athena gently. “We do this together, remember?” She knelt down, still towering above them even on a knee, and through the paralysis of confusion Hades only just noticed that Athena was addressing him as well—

Her form began dissolving away in dark wisps and Hades wanted to call out—to beg her to wait—

But he couldn’t speak and he couldn’t move—

He caught the faint hint of a smile on Athena’s face before she disappeared.

The sound of a faint sniffle cut through the whirlwind in his mind and brought him back, and when he looked down he found Annaiette pulling herself upright into a sitting position with a small grimace of pain. Immediately any lingering frustration and anger and shock gave way to regret and a profound shame that he had so completely lost control of himself and caused... _whatever that was._

She wiped her face on a sleeve and slowly her eyes found his—in them there was shame and contrition, and the sight of her only compounded the guilt in the pit of his stomach.

“I didn’t save you just to treat you like shite,” Annaiette said softly. “It’s hard sometimes but—I don’t want to do that to you.”

Hades pushed the guilt and anxiety down.

Swallowed the lump in his throat.

Let out a quivering breath.

“I’m sorry.”

Her lips turned up in a hesitant smile.

“It’s all right. Me, too.”

Hades breathed out in relief, though he wasn’t sure where to go from here. Nor did Annaiette, it seemed, whose eyes darted back and forth in obvious thought—eventually she turned to glance at the bread that had fallen into the grass.

“There’s still cloud banana loaf. If you don’t mind them grassy,” she said as she turned back to him, the corners of her eyes crinkling.

In this moment—in the wake of whatever had just happened—in the face of the smile he still couldn’t understand but was somehow genuine—he felt the darkness loosen its grip on his soul.

“I do like cloud bananas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: local man doesn't know what a friend is**
> 
> this chapter was hard to finish for a bunch of reasons (brain shenanigans, life shenanigans, this chapter being one of those weird on-the-way chapters to more interesting things). but here it is, finally.
> 
> @ my brain: fuck off pls
> 
> @ everyone else: if you want to join an ffxiv fic discord, [emet-selch's wholesomely debauched and enabling book club](https://discord.gg/xqc2Ut5) is a super great discord with lovely people and i love them and they will love you so much


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder that 5.2 has rekt my shit, so none of the Echo stuff matches canon anymore.

Hades and Annaiette sat beside each other at the edge of the Crystarium with a slice of cloud banana loaf each, neither able to meet the other’s gaze.

Whatever had just come to pass had left Hades utterly disconcerted. The sight of Athena—the old Athena in her old form before everything went horribly, horribly wrong—had been wholly unexpected, and the only place he thought he would see her in that form was in his nightmares. But the old Athena’s soul—the old Athena that had emerged just minutes ago—had the selfsame soul as the Elezen woman sitting beside him right now. One soul, stretched apart in a way that should have been horrifyingly grotesque in any normal circumstance, but was somehow entirely _not_ so in this one. Her soul, though still fragmented and missing pieces, was as whole as it could possibly be at the moment and seemed none the worse for wear.

They ate the slices of cloud banana loaf in a tense, uneasy silence.

When the silence became too much, Annaiette’s voice cut through the night air.

“That never happened before,” she said, her fingers absently fidgeting with the wrist strap of her gloves. “Her, I mean. Or me. Me, I suppose. Me, like _that_.”

Hades turned his head slightly toward her, an eyebrow raised. “Oh?” he said lightly. It was interesting how she talked about it, almost as though it was an entity separate from her despite how clear to _him_ that it had been the very same person.

She kept her eyes forward toward the horizon, her fingers still anxiously fiddling with the strap of her glove.

What a far cry this was from the unflappable Warrior of Light that had stuck him down.

“Soul crystals,” she said. “I’m sure you’re well-versed in them.”

He let out a small _hmm_ of interest. “Of course. The Allagans made judicious use of them, thanks to yours truly. Though I can’t say I’ve paid them any mind in more... _recent_ times; over the years I’ve found those that use soul crystals to be only marginally more remarkable than those that don’t,” said Hades, turning toward the horizon himself. “Save for you, of course, but you are remarkable for _far_ more interesting reasons.”

She had initially bristled at his words, but the compliment was not lost on her and she relaxed, letting out a snort of amusement. “Is that so? I suppose the size of these ears _is_ quite remarkable,” she said with a wry chuckle.

He wanted to laugh at the quip but found himself unable; there was a sort of trepidation evident in her body, so instead he waited patiently for her to gather her thoughts—it was clear she wished to say something but wasn’t able to find the words. Eventually she gave up and began rummaging about in her bag, and slowly, hesitantly holding out a blood red crystal in her palm. He looked questioningly from the crystal in her hand up to her eyes, and she extended it to him, silently urging him to take it.

Carefully, he took the crystal—his breath caught in his lungs when his fingertips brushed against her palm—and turned the crystal over in his hand. At first glance it appeared to be a typical soul crystal with the usual imprints of past users’ souls, albeit with an intriguingly unpleasant feel to the aether. But as he held the crystal in his fingers to examine it more closely, he noticed how the imprints of the different souls were woven together—quite the departure from the usual manner of imprint—and even more notable, he noticed how this weave of souls was affixed firmly to the portions of Annaiette’s aether within the crystal.

“What is this?” he asked, glancing up from the crystal to Annaiette’s anxious eyes.

“The soul crystal of a Dark Knight,” said Annaiette softly. “To channel the darkness within.”

Hades held the crystal out to return it to her and arched his brow at the way the crystal’s aether latched onto her as she took it in her hand—typical soul crystals didn’t often have such agency. _To channel the darkness within_ , she said...This aether was not significantly more Darkness-aspected than a typical soul and so he wondered if she perhaps meant something a bit more abstract...

“I’ve been—I haven’t been using it lately,” she continued, clenching the crystal in her hand with her head bowed. “Out of fear. Cowardice, perhaps.”

A laugh almost escaped him but he stifled it in time. _Cowardice?_ The Warrior of Light— _Fandaniel—_ was the polar opposite of a coward.

“And what could be so frightening that the Warrior of Light herself fears it?” Hades asked lightly.

But he saw the way her lips pursed and shoulders stiffened and immediately he felt a wave of regret wash over him.

_He shouldn’t have said that._

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “We all have our own fears, and it wasn’t my intention to make light of yours.”

“It's all right. It’s a long story that I’ll tell another time,” Annaiette said after a long silence, turning her head toward him with a smile—a warm one that held a hint of hurt behind it. “It’s not a story for the middle of the night when we’ve no drink. And no snacks.”

Hades allowed himself a small chuckle at the mention of snacks, and was relieved when she laughed in response.

“I await the story with bated breath,” he said with a thin smile.

“Well, don’t hold it in too long. I have it on good authority that breathing is, in fact, not just a suggestion,” she said, grinning and patting his shoulder once before heaving herself to her feet.

Her touch sent a strange, almost electric shock through him, and he nearly recoiled away from her hand—he was mortified and confused by this reflex but thankfully it appeared that her attention was on her thighs as she brushed banana loaf crumbs from them.

“Get some sleep. Or try, anyway,” said Annaiette as she straightened up, her thighs free of crumbs.

“You ought to take your own advice, hero,” he replied with a smirk—one he hoped would mask the confusion within.

She raised her eyebrows at his cheek and let out a short, barking laugh. “Oh Hades, didn’t you know that Warriors of Light don’t need to sleep?” she laughed. ”It’s in the rulebook—I checked it just the other day.”

The sound of his name on her lips, too, sent an odd, almost electric shock down his neck.

“Is that so?” asked Hades as he got to his feet, swallowing and hoping she hadn’t noticed. “And what, pray tell, did the rulebook say?”

Annaiette began walking toward the Pendants and glanced over her shoulder expectantly, smiling when he fell in step with her.

“It said very clearly: ‘Warriors of Light and their associated vessels are hereby exempted from sleeping.’ There was also a section about having sufficient snacks on one’s person at all times.” She gave him a cheeky, sidelong glance. “I don’t make the rules, Hades.”

“Ah, but an exemption does not imply that Warriors of Light _must not_ sleep, only that Warriors of Light do not have a requirement to do so. Ergo, you are free to sleep should you so choose.” He returned the glance with a smirk, and she made a show of pretending to be put out by his rebuttal.

“Clearly the rulebook needs to be revised for clarity,” she said with mock seriousness.

“Clearly.”

She laughed again before trailing off into silence. But during the lull after their facetious conversation, a baffling feeling of emptiness came over him and his smile faded slightly; for a moment he thought perhaps the awkward silence was to blame, but while the silence was ostensibly the cause, after another few anxious moments the feeling of a void only grew stronger. Their conversation felt comfortable—it felt so familiar and felt so right, but it somehow also felt as though something that ought to have been there to fill the silence was very conspicuously absent...

Annaiette cleared her throat and asked about what work was left on the Chamber in an obvious attempt to break the silence. He was welcome for anything to distract from the confusion and launched into an abridged explanation of the remaining work required to get the Chamber functional enough for their needs. It was obvious she had no understanding of how Allagan technology functioned but she seemed terribly interested regardless; there was something comfortable about this, and though this feeling, too, was confusing, he felt the anxiety fading just far enough into the background to be bearable. He finished his explanation just as they reached the Pendants and they climbed the staircase together in silence—he kept his eyes on the stairs and saw out of the corner of his eye that she was doing the time.

“Get some rest, Hades,” came her voice when they reached the landing of her floor. Another pat on the shoulder—another strange, almost electric feeling on his skin _—_ and when he looked up, another warm smile on her gaunt face.

“You too, hero.”

She grinned as she turned on her heel toward her room. “I suspect I’ll be up all night writing a petition to Hydaelyn for some rule changes,” she called over her shoulder, before disappearing into the dim light with a wave of her hand.

He glanced to his side without thinking, with his mouth open to say... _something,_ he didn’t know what...and found only empty space beside him. He furrowed his brow as the confusion reared its head once more—

—but slowly, slowly, realization dawned on him.

The feeling of emptiness—of a void clamoring to be filled—

A ragged breath left his throat.

The void was the space where Hythlodaeus belonged.

And in this moment—in this realization—a crushing loneliness bore down upon him.

Everything about the wry quality of their conversation just minutes ago had felt so _familiar_ —there was a burgeoning ache in his chest at the thought, and the idea of returning to his room to be alone was entirely too much to bear. His gaze gravitated toward Annaiette’s room as he slowly exhaled in an attempt to push down the feeling, and he found himself overcome with the urge to follow her. But though his feet wanted to move, he remained rooted there on the landing. It was after midnight, and surely Annaiette didn’t want to see his face until at least the morrow...

The longer he stood on the landing consumed with indecision, the more frustrated he grew. He was a soul millennia old now, standing there faltering like an imbecile of a schoolboy—he could clearly see himself and his foolishness and yet he wavered as he tried to decide whether acting on his instincts would bring disaster. The fear of _getting it wrong_ over such mundane things had been nonexistent as an immortal being with nigh omnipotent powers, but now, mortal with but one life and with no powers to speak of, he couldn’t help but feel that he might indeed get it wrong and then somehow drop dead the next day with no chance to put it right—

With a grunt of frustration, he shook the spiraling worst-case scenarios from his head and allowed instinct to take over, and it was this instinct which led him to Annaiette’s door with his knuckles poised to knock.

Despite the anxiety wrapped about his chest, he knocked.

When he saw her soul approaching the door and felt an irrational urge to flee—

The door opened a crack, revealing a tense Annaiette with suspicion on her face, squinting to see who was calling on her. Hades felt immediate regret at the sight of her suspicion and weariness, but when her eyes met his, her entire demeanor changed: her shoulders visibly relaxed and a perplexed smile appeared on her face.

“Hades! Are you all right?” she asked as she opened the door further.

“I’m fine, I—ah—”

He wasn’t sure how to explain why he was there in a way that didn’t sound utterly pathetic.

Annaiette regarded him for a moment before her expression softened, and she opened the door wider before turning to return to her table. “Come in,” she said over her shoulder.

He stepped inside, taking care to quietly shut the door behind him, and watched as she took a seat before the tome that lay open on the tabletop. She gestured to the seat next to her with a small smile. “Interested in the petition to Hydaelyn to change the rules, are you?” she asked with a soft laugh. “With two signatures, She’ll surely consider it.”

The exhaustion was evident in her voice—  
He shouldn’t have come—

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have disturbed you—” he began, but she scoffed and immediately waved his words away.

“It’s fine. I can’t sleep anyways.” She gestured to the seat next to her again. “Sit. What’s wrong?”

He sat down and somehow hadn’t the words to explain why he was here. In any other place with any other person there would have been a string of glib words already pouring from his mouth—

She smiled kindly when it became obvious he was struggling. “It’s fine, you don’t have to talk about it. I’ll not say no to some company, silent or otherwise. Stay as long as you need.” She gestured toward a desk by the bed. “There are books there if you want something to read. Apologies in advance—it’s all fiction.”

The anxiety loosened its hold on him, and for want of anything else to do he got up to examine the stack of tomes by the bed. Some were hardcover but there were a few that were little more than thick sheafs of paper bound together. While they were all written in Eorzean script and so must have been taken from the Source, he found that none of the titles were familiar to him. He picked one up and thumbed through it, finding it to be a story about adventurers fighting some sort of supernatural evil, and the other tomes proved to be similar: all were tales of adventurers and heroes fighting against some powerful enemy.

“Interesting taste you have,” he said as he skimmed a passage where some mages were exchanging frankly lackluster banter. “ _Being_ a hero not enough for you, is it?”

He heard her laugh.

“Those have good endings, so I like them,” she called.

_Good endings…_

In the end, none of the stories particularly interested him so he took the hardbound one he was holding and returned to the table with no intention to read it. She glanced up when he took a seat and gave him a cheeky, approving grin. “Good choice,” she said with the air of someone who knew he’d not enjoy it, before turning her attention back to the tome in front of her.

They sat in silence for a time whilst Annaiette read and Hades pretended to read; he was in no mood to read about scrappy young adventurers getting tangled up in trouble. And even if he _had_ been in the mood, he couldn’t have concentrated at all—he could feel anxiety radiating off of Annaiette’s soul, and he dearly hoped it wasn’t his presence causing it.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Hades glanced up from the tome to find her eyes on him, uncertainty etched on her face.

“Of course. What is it?” he said, straightening up and taking this opportunity to shut the book.

She shifted anxiously on her seat. “Erm. A bit of an odd question, but—I’ve tried to remember, I really have, but I can’t and—” She breathed out and turned on her seat to face him. “How did we meet? Obviously not here in the Crystarium. How did we meet in—before things went to shite.”

He was slightly taken aback by the question. It was certainly not an unreasonable one, but somehow this question had never crossed his mind—there was a pang in his heart at the thought that these shared memories that he so treasured were lost to her…

“How we met…” he said thoughtfully, and the corner of his mouth turned up in a smile as he brought the memories of that time forward into his mind. “The _third_ time we met is far more interesting than the first or second. You...” He paused a moment and hoped his next words would not cause her undue distress. “...You liked telling the story about how we met when you exploded.”

When she let out a confused and incredulous laugh, he breathed out in relief.

“Do you—do you think you could tell me about it?” Annaiette asked hesitantly, as though she herself wasn’t sure if she should ask.

He crossed his arms and considered the memory. “I could certainly tell you about it, however…”

Her face fell slightly. “Oh—it’s all right—I’m sorry if—”

“ _However_ ,” he repeated firmly so as to cut off the apologies tumbling out of her mouth, “why don’t I just _show_ you? Hydaelyn left me with the Echo, and I do think you’d like it.”

It was her turn to look taken aback.

“The Echo? But—no, I couldn’t ask—I don’t want to hurt you—” she sputtered.

“No need to worry, hero,” said Hades, smirking confidently when he felt anything but. “Past experiences would have me believe that I’ll simply pass out for a few bells—that is, if anything bad happens at all. And who knows? Perhaps Hydaelyn managed to fix this little problem.”

Hydaelyn likely did _not_ fix this little problem.

...But he _probably_ wouldn’t die.

Probably.

“Annaiette, I want to do this for you,” he said.

With a curt shake of her head, she turned back to her book. “Sorry, forget I asked. It’s not important.”

She was resolute in her refusal and was pointedly keeping her gaze down at the tome before her. But he couldn’t stop now—not when the idea was now firmly planted in him—

—not when he could give her a part of Athena that was otherwise missing.

“Annaiette, _I_ think it’s important. Allow me to do this for you. Please.”

Her eyes remained on the book but Hades couldn’t see them moving, and he could see the muscles along her jaw taut as she clenched it shut. Her soul was churning—anxiety and indecision were coming off her in waves—

But eventually her eyes turned to his.

Her jaw unclenched.

And though the uncertainty remained, she slowly exhaled and nodded.

“All right. Just—if you think you’re going to erase anything—”

“No—no, of course not,” he said quickly. “Never again.”

Annaiette exhaled again and looked him over, searching for any lies that might have been hidden behind his words.

And slowly, she nodded.

Something in his heart skipped at the sight.

She got to her feet—a hint of a blush on her face—and pointed at the bed in the corner of the room.

“Sit on the bed, then. I don’t want you cracking your head open if you pass out.”

Wordlessly he followed her and arched an eyebrow when she sat in the chair by the desk and gestured for him to sit on the edge of the bed across from her. “It would be remiss of me if I didn’t point out that you, too, could crack your head open if you fell,” said Hades as he took his place on the edge of the bed. She raised her eyebrows in turn and let out a snort of amusement.

“Trying to get me in bed with you, are you?”

“If you’re offering, then who am I to refuse?”

She let out a bark of laughter. “Shameless,” she said, grinning.

“I lost all my shame when Hydaelyn deemed fit to leave me naked on the Exarch’s doorstep.”

“Ah, is that when it was? Somehow I feel it was far earlier than that.”

They both laughed but soon fell silent, Hades looking to Annaiette expectantly—the risk of hitting her head was real if she passed out and fell out of the chair. Inwardly he briefly lamented the absence of the Scions; he was loath to admit it, but the logistics of safe Echo use were terribly bothersome without them.

“How about this?” said Annaiette as she moved from the chair to the floor beside his legs and rested her back against the side of the bed. She peered up at him with a smile. “Not far to fall if I’m here. But you stay there because I don’t want to have to drag you onto the bed if you pass out.”

This, Hades supposed, was the best configuration they were going to get. Not that it mattered in the end so long as she, too, minimized the risk of splitting her head open in case of sudden unconsciousness…

“Are you ready?” he asked, squaring his shoulders and glancing down at her. Her hands balled into fists in her lap, and her chest visibly moved as she took a deep breath.

“I am.”

With that, Hades shut his eyes and dug deep for the power of the Echo. Although it seemed his body was in much better shape than it had been on his initial arrival, it still took considerably more effort than it would have had he been at his normal strength. Regardless, faint white wisps soon emanated from his hand, and he pulled from his mind the memories of their earliest interactions as he pressed his palm gently—almost hesitantly—onto her shoulder.

Her soul, though whole and solid with her aether firmly contained, was frayed and torn around the edges—the soot and fire and death of the fall of Amaurot yet consumed her, while a sort of desperation wrapped around her like a weight threatening to pull her down—

But despite this, a cautious and muted eagerness came through and it was clear she was politely waiting for his request. The corner of his mouth twitched in amusement—did she not realize it was in her power to make a request of her own?

With the power of the Echo, he made the request.

And cautiously but eagerly, she accepted in kind.

* * *

_Aether buzzed and fizzled through and around his fingers._

_Reality consolidating, crystallizing—aether given form by his will._

_Soon the flow of aether slowed—its form settling—_

_And a delicate butterfly was left in the palm of his hand._

_Hades watched as it took flight, its wings flapping gently as it rose into the air. He regarded it for a few silent moments, noting with interest the shimmer of its wings when the lamplight struck them just so._

_And with a flick of his wrist, the butterfly disappeared, its form scattering back into the aether from whence it came._

_“What a pity. You didn’t like it?” came a voice from behind him._

_He turned to find Hythlodaeus approaching his workstation with his usual cheeky grin. Of course Hythlodaeus would come find him, rather than wait at their agreed-upon meeting place at the agreed-upon time._

_“Just a warm up to get started,” he replied simply, turning back to his workstation._

_Hythlodaeus leaned forward and rested his elbows on the tabletop, looking up to him curiously. “Getting started? It is almost time to be finishing up, my friend.”_

_“I was busy earlier. Lahabrea required assistance,” said Hades brusquely, a flash of irritation spreading through him. “Next week we’ve a scheduled high-risk experiment and he required assistance briefing the Conservator’s team.”_

_“Hmm. I didn’t think you were involved in that particular project,” Hythlodaeus said thoughtfully._

_“I am...tangentially attached,” he replied. “Still, would that the **actual** senior researcher heading the project had shown his face.”_

_Hythlodaeus let out a small chuckle. “I suspect he was afraid of the Conservator. Nonetheless, you ought to be pleased that Lahabrea thinks so highly of you.”_

_“Hmph.”_

_While Hades knew Lahabrea did in fact have a high opinion of him, it had been Lahabrea’s direct second who had requested Hades’s presence. Lahabrea’s proclivity for rambling was legendary and also a constant struggle for the second, and for this particular project, Hades had been the only one available with the requisite knowledge to reel Lahabrea back should he begin veering off course. The Conservator, esteemed Fandaniel the Protector, was perhaps equally legendary for having little patience for most things—excessive verbosity especially—and he already had a low opinion of the experiment for which he’d been summoned. That the Conservator brought the Fifth Complement along was a clear indicator of just how risky he thought this experiment would be. And thus, Lahabrea’s second had entreated Hades for assistance that the briefing session would go as smoothly as possible._

_“Come now, my friend. What work could you possibly do so late in the day?” said Hythlodaeus as he straightened up. “Better to return to it on the morrow, when you’re less agitated.”_

_“I’m not agitated,” said Hades._

_He was most definitely agitated._

_Hythlodaeus merely smiled._

_“Very well, then. Let’s go,” Hades said finally, pushing his chair under the table. Hythlodaeus’s smile widened._

_“Let’s!”_

_Hythlodaeus babbled about his day at the Bureau of the Architect as they made their way out of the Akadaemia. In recent years he had tired of research and instead joined the Bureau as a member of one of several committees that vetted submitted Concepts, and as such he was rife with stories of varying hilarity and horror. Today, it seemed, was a day to share a horror: a sort of sentient turnip clearly made as an homage to the original Halmarut’s own creations, except with significantly more teeth (it was covered in teeth) and polyps which could pop and release awful neurotoxins into the air (it was also covered in polyps). Hades glanced to Hythlodaeus as they walked—at times members of the evaluation committees were injured in the course of their work, and he hoped his friend remained hale and whole._

_The pair slowed when they encountered a gaggle of unfamiliar people examining the hall and poring over matrixes. But when Hades looked a bit closer, he found that he recognized the archon of the Fifth Complement; it was difficult to forget her soul’s peculiar hue._

_“Ah, it seems we’re in the way. Step aside, everyone,” said the archon, and the Fifth Complement quickly shuffled out of the middle of the walkway. As they drew closer, she stepped forward and raised a hand in greeting._

_“Good evening. Thank you again for the briefing earlier, it was quite informative,” she said, smiling._

_“Not at all,” Hades replied with a nod._

_“And what might all of you be doing here? Tour of the Akadaemia?” Hythlodaeus asked curiously. Hades let out the tiniest sigh over his shameless friend—surely his curiosity was piqued by the color her soul._

_If the archon found Hythlodaeus too prying, she didn’t look it apart from a near-imperceptible moment of hesitation._

_“We are familiarizing ourselves with the structure of the Akadaemia,” she said, gesturing to the vaulted wall behind her, and the people who had resumed examining it. “It will be useful to know where the first points of failure may be, and what may be involved in mending them.”_

_With the scale of the experiment, this was quite prudent indeed._

_“Ah, you are working, then. Pray forgive the distraction,” said Hythlodaeus apologetically. “Have a pleasant evening!”_

_Hades nodded to her once more as he and Hythlodaeus continued down the hall, leaving the Fifth Complement to their work._

_The Fifth Complement was the most skilled response team in the Bureau of the Conservator, and as such was the team sent in when things have gone very, very wrong—or in this case, when things have the **potential** of going very, very wrong. He had never met a member of the Bureau of the Conservator before—let alone a member of the Fifth Complement—but he had been struck by the incredibly specific and pertinent questions they had asked regarding the nature of the experiment. Questions which strayed quite close to the academic if he were to be honest, and it seemed this was a regular occurrence considering Fandaniel’s irritated huffing before he eventually refocused their attention._

_The experiment scheduled for the following week was another trial to create a localized timespace bubble with aetherial laws which differed from their own, and though he didn’t think it would fail catastrophically enough to require a response, a small chance was still a chance and he would have no other team at the ready._

_~_

_Hades watched in horror from the observation deck. The experiment was destabilizing, reality wobbling and rippling and the surrounding chamber somehow bowing inwards toward the nucleus of the bubble. The Fifth Complement had already leapt into action to counter the bowing and stabilize reality in the chamber whilst the researchers frantically tried to stabilize the bubble itself, but Hades could see them losing their grasp and he stood on edge, ready to leap in and help the struggling researchers should they fail to contain it—_

_But before he could move he saw a flash of color as the archon grew in size and seemed to wrap her arms around the center of the room—_

_There was an explosion that knocked Hades back, and the front wall of the observation deck was shattered inward by the impact of an enormous dark mass—he raised a hand to transfigure the glass threatening to perforate him, but in the moment before he loosed the magicks, the glass and debris dissolved into nothingness with a soft hiss and the dark mass shrank and landed in front of him with a_ **whump** _._

_The archon blinked up at him from the floor, her face cut and burnt but otherwise in one piece. In a snap she was on her feet, looking from him to the other researchers on the deck._

_“Are you all right?” she asked hoarsely, coughing out a puff of dust as she straightened her cracked mask._

_“We’re fine,” said one of the researchers helping another up. The archon turned to Hades, awaiting his answer._

_“I’m fine,” he said._

_“Good.” She nodded in approval and turned on her heel, before looking to him over her shoulder. “Your colleagues require assistance,” she said, before turning away to jump from the observation deck back into the disaster._

_And without hesitation, he leapt in after her._

* * *

Hades slowly woke to softness and warmth and the smell of sage.

He nestled his cheek further into the pillow and relished the scent.

But soon the smoldering embers of his mind flared into life when it occurred to him that the pillows in his room did not smell like sage, nor did any of his meager belongings in this life.

With a groan, he blinked his bleary eyes open and made to rub his eyes with a hand, but he found he had to extricate an arm from the veritable cocoon of blankets tucked around him.

“Oh, you’re awake.”

A dark silhouette against the bright light streaming in through the window must have been the source of the voice—of Annaiette’s voice. He rubbed his eyes until finally his eyes adjusted and the indistinct silhouette resolved into the familiar form of the Warrior of Light, who was seated in a chair beside the window with a book in her lap.

A small smile spread across her lips.

Her eyes crinkled.

“You were right. I did like it.”

* * *

[4/12/2020 edit] So I drew this last night for some people in the book club discord. Hahaha this is what happened after he passed out:

also if y'all aren't hovering your mouse over these images you're missing out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: utilizing the echo for the purposes of memory transfer without proper supervision or equipment is against OSHA regulations**
> 
> it was hard to write this because of brain weasels and feeling like the story is probably very boring now but in spite of all that, thank you for coming to read i love all of you
> 
> [edit] oh yeah i forgot! the [emet-selch book club](https://discord.gg/xqc2Ut5) is an awesome place with fic writers and readers and i wouldn't be here without them ; w ;


	11. Chapter 11

_In this barren land at the precipice of darkness, Hades stood with the all-encompassing presence of Zodiark before him._

_The glow of Hydaelyn clashed with His, overwhelming in its proximity. But His Lord gave no directive to purge this barren land of Her presence, and instead kept His Sight upon the horizon behind him, where Hades could not see._

_To his right stood Elidibus, his eyes to the horizon._

_To his left stood Athena, her eyes to the horizon._

_And somehow both beside Athena and far off in the distance was Hydaelyn, and Her Sight, too, was fixed on the horizon._

_Elidibus turned his head to him, and though Hades could not see his eyes through the red mask of the Emissary, he knew they were pleading._

_“Help us, Emet-Selch.”_

_In the silence after Elidibus’s words, Athena turned her head to him._

_And on her face and in her eyes and in her soul, he could feel the despair. He could feel the desperation._

_“Help us, Hades.”_

_In the silence after Athena’s words, Hades tried to speak—to ask what manner of help this broken mockery of a man could give—_

_But the words wouldn’t come._

_And His Lord, who saw all with His Sight, must have surely seen his uncertainty and let out a piercing keening sound—a desperate plea for help that Hades knew not how to give—_

_And another voice rent the air in distress—Hydaelyn’s voice, somehow both pleading but aglow with Her confidence in him—_

_Hades tried once more to speak, and still the words would not come._

_Athena smiled with tears in her eyes, and Hades watched in horror as she stepped forward toward the horizon with the intent to fight whatever specter existed which struck fear into their gods—_

_And Elidibus, too, stepped forward toward the horizon with the intent to fight—he was no warrior but he would do anything for their Lord—_

_Hades wanted to move—he wanted to turn to the horizon to behold what enemy approached—but his leaden body was rooted to the barren land and he could not move an ilm—_

_“Help us, Emet-Selch!”  
“Help us, Hades!”_

_Zodiark and Hydaelyn together, their shrieks of desperation splitting his soul in twain—_

Hades felt their cries and woke, covered in sweat with his heart pounding in his chest.

His chest heaved for breath as his eyes darted wildly about the room in search of Zodiark and Hydaelyn, but soon the fog of sleep faded from his mind and with it the terror of the dream, and instead he found himself lying alone in his room in the dim light just before dawn.

There was no Zodiark here, nor Hydaelyn, and somehow disappointingly, no Elidibus.

No Athena.

He curled up under the sheets and stifled the pathetic whimper that threatened to escape his throat at the deep ache in his soul.

It would have been naught for him to knock on Annaiette’s door and ease the desire for her presence under the guise of getting morning exercise with the striking dummy she’d finally installed. But today this was impossible because Annaiette was not currently on the First; she’d been away in the Source for nearly three weeks now to gather more components from Azys Lla and request further work from Garlond Ironworks at his behest. He had spoken too soon when he thought the work to repair the Demiurgos Chamber nearly complete; frustratingly, some of their tools—though repaired to the best of the Ironworks’ ability—proved to be nigh unusable without the delicate tuning only specialized Allagan machina could provide, and despite their best efforts they found themselves unable to finish the critical final repairs.

Because of this unfortunate revelation, Hades had spent considerable time completely redesigning the relevant tools from scratch in order to make them more suitable for existing Garlean fabrication techniques. Though he hadn’t the time nor facilities to test the designs, he was fully confident that any competent Garlean engineer would find them comprehensible.

And based on the tale of how his initial requests had been received, he was also confident that Nero Scaeva was going to have a field day.

The wry amusement at the potential chaos in Garlond Ironworks was somehow grounding enough for him to push the remnants of the nightmare into the back of his mind, and this in turn afforded him the presence of mind to further ground himself in the feeling of the blankets wrapped around him.

He tried not to think.

It was difficult—it was so, _so_ difficult—to keep the massive and unbearable flood of guilt and regret at bay, but his only other option was to let the guilt and regret claim his mortal body and now-mortal soul. Indeed, some days it felt as though this mortal body was separating from this mortal soul, so great was the dissonance he struggled to contain.

But this morning he tried not to think of what he had done and what he had been and what could have come to pass and so very nearly did—

He focused on the sheets. His breath.

The smell of sage.

He cringed as he pulled his pillow over his head, and finally the whimper he had been holding back finally broke free. The memory of waking in her bed wrapped in unfamiliar warmth and comfort and the faint scent of sage...It was irrepressible. The only thing that held it at arm’s length was the logical, rational part of him pointing out the glaring fact that he had, in fact, conspired to turn her into a Lightwarden to end all Lightwardens and then subsequently tried to kill her when that failed.

All in the name of a god who had him in His thrall.

The dissonance was burgeoning within him and it was becoming increasingly obvious that smothering himself with his pillow was doing naught to stem it or the faint nausea coming along with it, and so with a grunt of frustration he threw the pillow and blankets off and forced himself upright. He swallowed thickly to tamp down the urge to throw up from the sudden movement—he tensed his body as though to stifle the awful thoughts and feelings and vomit coming to a head within him, before letting out his breath in both frustration and relief as said thoughts and feelings and potential vomit faded into the background.

When he finally made it outside, the sun had just risen over the horizon to cast its gentle light over the Crystarium. He’d discovered in the short time that the striking dummy had been installed that it was best to make use of it as close to dawn as possible to avoid any passersby who would gawk at him or—gods forbid—any who wished to join him; there were a good many night owls among the Crystarium populace who spent time looking at the starry sky, so unless he wanted to get training in after midnight, sunrise was the better option.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he found the area around the striking dummies unoccupied. Annaiette had intended the dummies to be open for all in the Crystarium to use so there was always a chance that someone might be there—today, though, there wasn’t a soul in the vicinity save for him. A rack of wooden weapons of all shapes and sizes sat by the gate leading into the training area, and he pulled his preferred weapon from the rack as he passed: a wooden sword with the shape and weight of a standard-issue Garlean gunblade, likely made specifically for his benefit despite Annaiette’s insistence that she personally wished for a wide variety of weapons to use.

A yawn escaped him as he dropped his bag and coat beside the rack, and he rubbed at the bare skin of his arms before stretching them upward in order to wake the muscles of his shoulders and back. He would have preferred to keep the coat on as he was somewhat ill-at-ease with the current state of his body—he was slowly gaining more muscle mass but he still looked positively lanky compared to his previous vessel, and as it turned out, being unable to change one’s appearance at a whim left him with this incredibly unfamiliar feeling of self-consciousness.

The first half of his routine consisted of drills taken from standard Garlean basic training, and though he thought them to be terribly boring, he would not have built them into the standard regimen all those years ago if they weren’t effective in bringing even the most unfit civilians into passable levels of physical fitness. He was sure he looked quite the sight—his routine generally included a jog around the periphery, push-ups and knee-lifts and other bodyweight exercises, and today he felt well enough to vault back and forth over the fence enclosing the area since he hadn’t any convenient walls to try (and fail) to climb.

A thin layer of sweat covered his face by the time he felt ready to do drills with the striking dummy, and while it was no substitute for a proper training partner—he tried not to think about how Annaiette was unsurprisingly a very good one due to her time with the pugilists and monks—the dummy served to at least allow him to properly make the motions. With his body in the state that it was, doing the motions was enough to make progress, which brought him some measure of comfort; the drills felt easier and the sword lighter in his hands with each passing day.

Hades was having some semblance of a good time after the last night’s awful dream, so it stood to reason that something would soon happen to sour it—namely, the approach of the Crystal Exarch, who had a look on his face and a glint in his soul that betrayed his intent to have some manner of discussion about Annaiette with him. The Exarch had the decency to at least wait some distance away outside the training area until Hades finished his set and took a break to drink from his waterskin.

“Good morning, Emet-Selch,” said the Exarch politely.

“To what do I owe this pleasure, Exarch?” Hades asked dryly as he capped the waterskin and wiped the sweat from his face. “You look to be in a coffee sort of mood, and yet here you are empty-handed.”

The placid smile on the Exarch’s face was immediately replaced with an irritated frown as his ears fell flat against his head.

Hades would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy aggravating the Exarch so.

The Exarch quickly recovered though, brushing the wrinkles from his robes as though to brush the irritation away. “I’m afraid this is much too far for an old man like me to carry coffee for the likes of you,” he said lightly. Hades stifled a smirk at the Exarch’s sarcasm—he was certainly trying his best to roll with the punches and despite Hades’ enjoyment of pressing the Exarch’s buttons, it was preferable to spend extended periods of time around a wry Exarch than a moody one.

“No respect for your elders, I see. How typical of the younger generation.”

The Exarch chuckled—a genuine one—before letting out a small sigh that indicated he was ready to talk about whatever it was he’d come to talk about.

“I suppose you’ve already worked out what I wanted to talk about,” said the Exarch, who looked curiously flustered and seemed to be having difficulty keeping eye contact. “Annaiette needs help and I don’t know how we can give it.”

“Help in what way?” Hades asked, and he wondered with interest if the Exarch might soon put his foot in his mouth.

The Exarch huffed.

“Don’t pretend you don’t see it yourself, Emet-Selch,” said the Exarch, an ear twitching. “She hasn’t slept properly since fighting _you_ , and she has spent nights sobbing in the middle of the streets of Amaurot. Not two suns ago she spent the night crying on the ground in the middle of La Noscea—!”

The revelation that Annaiette was doing more crying than sleeping was certainly concerning but not entirely surprising, but there was something else in the Exarch’s words that irked Hades.

“You’ve been _watching_ her, have you?” Hades said coldly, narrowing his eyes. “Does she know that the Crystal Exarch continues to watch her from his Tower, I wonder? It seems we’re more alike than I thought—you certainly do like to watch, don’t you?”

The Exarch bristled with indignation. “As though you’re any better, intruding upon her with the Echo to try and get her in bed with you—”

It was clear the Exarch hadn’t meant to say this; his ears flicked in surprise and he immediately pursed his lips shut, but the damage was done and Hades felt a mixture of rage and disgust welling up within him—

“If you were watching us _properly_ , my dear Exarch, you would have seen that I only did what I did with her consent. Which is more than I can say for _you_.”

They both tensed and silently stared each other down.

It took Hades but a moment to decide he had no desire to continue speaking with the Exarch. “My advice, Exarch—should you truly wish to do aught to help her—is to stop skulking around behind her back as though you know better than her and just _talk_ to her,” said Hades as he stepped past the Exarch toward the weapon rack.

The Exarch balled his hands into fists as he turned to face Hades. “Of course I’ve tried to talk to her!” he said, his voice strained with frustration. “But she merely pretends that nothing is the matter.”

“And why wouldn’t she, I wonder?” Hades said airily as he put the training sword back in its place and began pulling his coat on. He didn’t continue speaking; he hoped the Exarch was smart enough to figure out the meaning on his own.

“Emet-Selch, I came to talk to you to see if you would care to help someone you supposedly care about, not have you point out all my very-well-known shortcomings,” the Exarch said with a scowl.

“Did you, now?” Hades said, arching an eyebrow at him as he shouldered his bag. “No, I think you’ve come to me because you think I’ve some secret to interacting with her because of our history, not because you are so _noble_ so as to ask your former enemy for help.”

The Exarch grit his teeth. “Do you care to do aught to help, or are you content to just listen to the sound of your own voice?”

“What would you have me do, Exarch?” asked Hades with an exasperated sigh. “What ails her cannot be eased with magicks nor medicine. I truly thought you smart enough to know this.” This was no lie; he was quite bemused by whatever it was the Exarch was trying to accomplish, and the churn of the Exarch’s soul suggested a turmoil that was likely affecting the foolish boy’s judgment...

The Exarch only glared daggers at him as he made for the gate of the training area, and as Hades passed, he paused briefly before him. “I suspect your own troubles are clouding your judgment,” Hades said. “Perhaps _you_ are the one who needs someone to talk to. Perhaps you should think on it.”

Hades turned to leave, and something came over him for the first time since his unceremonious return to life—

As he walked off, he gave an nonchalant wave of his hand.

* * *

It was a bell past dawn when Annaiette arrived in Mor Dhona laden with pastries and a cake from the Bismarck in Limsa Lominsa. Garlond Ironworks would accept no money for the work she had foisted upon them save for that needed to purchase additional materiel, and so she fell back on the usual non-monetary goods she oft gifted people: food. While she was certain they would appreciate any food made by her own hands, she wished to impress upon them the depths of her gratitude and thus ordered two dozen pastries and a cake from the Bismarck (and tea from Doma to go with it) in the hopes that it would be visually extravagant enough to properly convey her feelings. It did feel like somewhat of a cheat since she was good friends with Lyngsath and was able to bypass the usual weeks-long waitlist in exchange for a day’s worth of work, but Cid and Company didn’t need to know that.

Jessie had been the one to answer the door, and Annaiette was quite pleased at the way her eyes widened at the sight of the Bismarck’s logo burnt into the boxes. “Is that—” Jessie began, her eyes on the boxes even as she stepped aside to allow Annaiette to pass.

“I just wanted to show my appreciation for all of you,” Annaiette said brightly. “The cake should go in the coldbox until you want to eat it.”

“Of course.”

It was clear that Jessie was carefully controlling her excitement as she led her to the kitchen, and it was made much more obvious when Annaiette opened the boxes of pastries to reveal an array of mille-feuilles and tarts in one and a more modest assortment of croissants and brioches in the other. “This tea should go well with the things I brought,” Annaiette said, smiling as she pulled a sack of tea leaves from her bag.

“This is—thank you, Annaiette,” said Jessie. “How in the world did you—”

“I have my ways,” she replied with a grin. “It’s the least I could do, seeing as I threw your schedule for a loop again. Help yourself.”

Jessie was nearly beside herself trying to decide what to eat first when Cid arrived, empty coffee cup in hand. “Good morning, Annaiette. What’s all this?” Cid asked, peering at the pastries on the table and his eyes widening in surprise.

“I got them from the Bismarck as thanks for what you’ve all done for me,” she said. He didn’t respond to the name, but she hadn’t expected him to know it—he stared at the pastries in awe regardless, and the sight of it made her smile.

“They look beautiful. Thank you, my friend,” said Cid warmly. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

Before she could answer, a faint but familiar voice could be heard approaching from the depths of the Ironworks workshop.

“ _Garlond! Garlond, I told you to inform me_ immediately _when Annaiette returned!_ ”

With a sheaf of blueprints in hand and a look on his face that bordered on manic, Nero didn’t so much as enter the kitchen as burst into it. “Annaiette, who is the Garlean on the First?!” he demanded.

“Nero, calm down!” Cid interjected. “She only just got here—this can wait until _later_.”

“No it _cannot_ , Garlond!”

“Is there are a problem?” Annaiette asked as coolly as she could. She knew this was going to happen and still she was unprepared for this man to be brandishing Hades’ blueprints at her so fervently.

“The Garlean on the First, Annaiette! There is no way these could have come from anyone but a Garlean!” Nero exclaimed. “I—”

He paused when Jessie placed a mille-feuille with red icing in his free hand as she passed him on her way out of the kitchen and out of this impending nonsense. Rather than brush the pastry away as Annaiette expected, she and Cid were afforded a few moments of silence whilst Nero took a bite from it.

“As I was saying,” he continued when he swallowed his mouthful—slower now that the bite of pastry arrested some of the momentum of his speech. “Understand, Annaiette, that I am second to none and these designs—they’re nothing like I’ve ever seen! What Garlean—especially one approaching _my_ brilliance—could possibly be on the First? I must know!”

“How could a Garlean be on the First?” Annaiette asked, crossing her arms. “Don’t be silly.”

“Still a terrible liar, Annaiette,” he said, his mouth turning up in his characteristic grin. “Take me with you.”

Annaiette took a step back in surprise.

“ _What?_ ” she and Cid exclaimed.

“Take me with you to the First,” he repeated. It was clear he was utterly serious.

“I can’t take you to the First, Nero,” said Annaiette with a frown. “I can’t bring another person across the Rift.”

Nero let out a groan of exasperation. “You don’t understand, Annaiette, I need to meet this person!”

“I understand perfectly, but that doesn’t change the fact that I literally cannot take you.”

“Nero, you can’t go to the First,” Cid said wearily. “Sit down and eat.”

Annaiette stifled a laugh at the sight of a near-mutinous Nero sinking down into a seat at the table. “Things are going in our favor thanks to all of you,” Annaiette said lightly as she plucked a brioche from the box and took a seat in the chair beside him. “If our luck holds, there may actually come a day where you _can_ meet them.”

“So long as you have _me_ building things for you,” said Nero through another mouthful of mille-feuille, “that is as good as a guarantee.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: training session interrupted by a passing cat**
> 
> sorry this update took so long. i've been sidetracked by nero shenanigans hahahah. if you're into hades, emet, crack shipping, and/or porn, you should check out the [fundamentals of allagan engineering](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23777755) for a good time. hades makes it back to the source and proceeds to teach one (1) genius engineer all sorts of things.
> 
> as always, a big thanks to the emet-selch bookclub!! i love you all so much ;-;
> 
> if you, reader, would like to join a discord of ffxiv fanfic writers, who will aggressively love you, [give us a peek](https://discord.gg/xqc2Ut5)! it's big but we've got a lovely mod team who keep things from devolving into madness :)


	12. Chapter 12

The Demiurgos Chamber whirred into life.

The _important_ critical warning indicators were finally gone.

And finally— _finally_ —the main console reported its readiness to write data.

Hades glanced to the people gathered around him and the main console—the Exarch, Urianger, and Annaiette were watching him intently, breath bated—and slowly, he allowed his lips to spread into a smile.

“I do believe our repairs here are complete. Well done.”

They all audibly let out their breath, and Annaiette whooped in excitement before extending a fist to each one of them in turn. She had evidently only recently learned this so-called “fist bump” if the Scions’ confusion was any indication, so Hades didn’t feel terribly bad that even he hadn’t any clue what this gesture was.

“’Twould be prudent to test its capabilities, would it not?” asked Urianger.

Hades inwardly laughed—while Urianger was certainly correct, it was clear in his eyes that he was eager to see the Chamber do its job. He crossed his arms thoughtfully and considered what options they had for a swift test that would serve as a sufficiently satisfying proof of their success.

“Do you doubt our work, Emet-Selch?” the Exarch asked when Hades did not answer.

“ _I_ have every confidence that this chamber will serve our purposes, Exarch,” said Hades said with a smirk, putting a hand to his chest with an animated flourish. “Regrettably, your trust in me is sorely lacking, and thus we require a test that will unequivocally prove success even to you.”

Behind the bristling Exarch, Hades caught Annaiette and Alisaie stifling laughs.

And just past them, his eyes fell upon an unused but functional management node sitting on the floor and almost immediately an idea took form.

“Annaiette, the management node behind you, if you please,” he said as he knelt down to rummage through one of the many bins of parts they had accumulated during the course of their work. When he found the component he wanted, he stood up and held it out to the Exarch.

“What is this?” the Exarch asked suspiciously.

“My, skeptical before I’ve even said a word,” Hades said with a wry smile and tone that he knew would rankle the Exarch. The irritated glare that he received in reply told him he was very much successful, but the Exarch took the proffered component regardless.

When Annaiette brought the management node, Hades held that out, too, to the Exarch.

“You are well acquainted with how management nodes are configured, Exarch,” Hades began when the Exarch took the node in his arms with equal suspicion. “You know that these nodes are designed to be modular, and you also know that the later Allagan designs all but standardized the interfaces for various components.” He gestured to the component in the Exarch’s hands. “That component does not come standard on these management nodes, but adheres to the selfsame standards. You may use this chamber to install and reconfigure the node to make use of that component. Be sure to include a subroutine which sends a single-pulse signal through its secondary input port, to be triggered by the words ‘single capture.’ This should be child’s play for you now.”

It was clear the Exarch wanted to continue being suspicious but couldn’t completely hide the hint of a smile at the compliment Hades had slipped in. But the Exarch said nothing and instead set about using the chamber’s console to reconfigure the node as Hades had taught him whilst they awaited new tools from the Source. It didn’t take the Exarch long; just long enough for Annaiette and Alisaie to start a conversation about a restaurant in Limsa Lominsa, but not long enough for Annaiette to describe the taste of the cake from said restaurant which she had apparently delivered to the Ironworks.

“There, it’s done,” the Exarch said with a muted smile of triumph. The now-active node floated obediently before them, the component protruding from the node’s auxiliary port on its upper hemisphere.

“And now to see if it works,” said Hades with a clap of his hands. “Exarch, please stand in front of the node and command it to perform a single capture.”

When the words left Hades’ mouth, the Exarch immediately shoved the node aside, as though expecting something to shoot out of it. Hades arched an eyebrow.

“Are you quite all right, Exarch?”

“I am not so foolish as to blindly trust in anything you’ve done—” the Exarch began with a scowl.

“Have I lied to you once during my time here, or done anything to harm you?” Hades asked, rolling his eyes. The Exarch, predictably, bristled in response. “Very well. Because _I_ am not frightened of a low-power and thus harmless component, I shall test it. Management node, face me.”

The node—and everyone’s eyes—turned to face him. He looked to the node with his arms thrown wide and the most dashing smile he could muster. “Management node, single capture.”

The node made a small _blip_ of acknowledgement and a small light on the component blinked once. And before his onlookers could start asking their inevitable questions, he issued the node another command: “Management node, display most recent capture.”

It _blipped_ again before a holographic screen appeared just in front of it. The image displayed was somewhat grainy with noticeable distortion around the edges—likely degradation of the component over time—but it was nonetheless very obviously him from just moments ago.

“Ah, seems you got it right the first time, Exarch. Well done,” said Hades, smirking and stepping aside to allow them to see. “I look quite good in this photograph, don’t you think?”

“Hmm, could have turned slightly more to the left, I think,” said Annaiette, grinning and giving him a cheeky, sidelong glance. She didn’t seem as surprised by the still image of him as everyone else crowding around the screen, so Hades wondered if she remembered this—or something like this—from before the End. With a pang in his heart, he thought back on the handful of pictures which he’d been quite fond of, now lost to the fires and the beasts and the Sundering...

“It seems there is no pleasing you, hero,” he said with mock hurt. “Unfortunately, the Royal Graphician has been unavailable for some thousand years now, so we must make do.”

He heard Urianger muttering about examining the component at a later time and thought it prudent to refocus their attention to the matter at hand. “What say you, my dear Exarch? Is this proof enough?” Hades asked.

Begrudgingly, the Exarch nodded. “I suppose it is,” he replied. “Though we could have configured the node by other means already available to us, as you are well aware.”

“Certainly. But those ‘other means’ amount to little more than brute force. How long would it have taken you otherwise? Bells? Days?” Hades gestured to the main console behind the Exarch. “Here it took you less than a quarter bell to reconfigure it, with far less struggle besides. You may even add additional functionality to it should you wish, and all before supper tonight.”

“You’ve made your point, Emet-Selch. I believe you,” said the Exarch with one last begrudging nod before turning to the others with a smile on his face. “I do believe this warrants a celebration of sorts after the work we’ve done. As it’s nearly time for supper, how about we all eat together tonight? Annaiette, Urianger, would you be up for a look in the larder?”

Annaiette immediately perked up at the mention of food, and it seemed Hades and Alisaie both could not hide their amusement. “Of course. I’m sure we can put together a little something,” Annaiette said brightly.

“And what about us? Do you need anything?” asked Alisaie, gesturing vaguely at Hades.

The Exarch considered her offer for a moment. “I’ve not restocked wine or liquor in quite some time now,” the Exarch finally said. “A few bottles of wine would not go amiss.”

“Hmm. Right,” Alisaie said with the slightest furrow of her brow. She turned to Hades, and to his surprise she rapped his arm with the back of her hand. “Come then, Emet-Selch. Let’s see what we can find.”

Hades glanced to Annaiette as Alisaie made her way to the door; she seemed pleasantly confused about Alisaie’s behavior, but nonetheless gave him an encouraging smile—he uncomfortably felt as a child being encouraged to play with the other children, though he wondered if Alisaie actually meant to bring him along or if she was merely getting him out of the Exarch’s hair to allow Annaiette time with him.

“Try not to have too much fun without us, hero,” he called over his shoulder as he gave a nonchalant wave and followed after Alisaie. She was waiting for him just outside the door and gave him an expectant look before setting off for the Tower’s main doors.

He fell in step with her and let out a small chuckle. “Spending time with an Ascian by choice? Color me shocked.”

“It’s a special occasion—it would do you well to not get used to it,” she said flatly, though he caught a small twitch in the corner of her mouth when he glanced down at her.

They didn’t speak again until they were outside the Tower and making their way to the Musica Universalis market.

“Annaiette doesn’t like wine,” Alisaie said suddenly as they neared the market.

“Oh? Then what would you suggest?” Hades asked.

“Mead, I think. Or whiskey.” Alisaie paused a moment. “She has to watch while you unseal the bottle. She’ll refuse otherwise.”

He now had the distinct feeling that this conversation was heading in quite a different direction than he initially expected. “Will she now?” he said lightly.

“Do you know about what happened to the Sultana?”

Hades thought back on what he knew of the Sultana, and only one incident felt like the “happened to the Sultana” sort. “I read the reports delivered to my grandson. It appeared that the Sultana fell ill, and there was an attempted coup in that time. I was quite dead at the time and _trying_ to get some sleep, so regrettably, those reports are the extent of my knowledge. Ul’dah seemed none the worse for wear when I awoke, in any case.”

Alisaie gave him a look of disbelief that suggested she would like nothing more than to strike him for his gall. But she didn’t, and instead turned her gaze forward.

“Seems the Emperor’s intel was bad, which is good for us, I suppose. You have it backwards—the Sultana was poisoned as part of the coup. Something was put in her wine.” She paused a moment but didn’t look at him. “Annaiette was there. They were eating together. She was framed for the murder of the Sultana.”

That was certainly news to him. He _thought_ those reports were awfully flimsy...

“And in Ishgard, there was an incident where her wine was drugged. I still thank the Twelve that the perpetrator only wished to put her to sleep rather than kill her...”

While this news—terrible as it was—was not unwelcome, Hades still wasn’t sure where Alisaie intended to take this conversation. “And so now, she quite understandably dislikes wine and distrusts unsealed drink,” said Hades. “I appreciate this knowledge but I suspect you didn’t take _the Ascian_ on this outing just for that.”

But it would be yet a moment before he got his answer. They’d just stopped at a merchant selling various liquors and wines, and Alisaie had left his side to purchase two bottles of mead— _and_ whiskey—and three bottles of a red wine. The entire exchange made him smile in both disbelief and amusement; Alisaie took the time to listen to the merchant’s mead and whiskey recommendations, but when it came to wine, she specifically asked for “cheap wine that won’t make my coinpurse weep.” Once she had paid—no weeping coinpurse sounds could be heard—she caught his gaze and nodded at the trio of wine bottles on the counter before turning to leave with the mead and whiskey in her arms.

“You certainly don’t beat around the bush,” said Hades as he fell in step with her with wine in hand. “So why, then, are you doing so with the history of Annaiette’s wine traumas? What are you getting at?”

“Do you think people tell stories about that?” she asked, glancing up at him with piercing eyes. She turned her gaze forward again without waiting for an answer. “They don’t tell stories about the hero who hates wine, least of all when people are dying left and right to Black Rose. They tell stories about the hero who felled primals and toppled empires and the like.”

He felt the point of this exercise was soon to come.

“The Exarch doesn’t _know_ her. He’s so sure that he does, but he only knows the stories from _that_ Calamity.”

And there it was.

Alisaie clicked her tongue in distaste. “Annaiette told me it makes her uncomfortable, but she’s too kind to tell him that. If you ask me, there are a lot of things she could stand to tell him.”

“Did you bring me out here just to complain about the Exarch?”

“And what if I did?” Alisaie asked, her tone challenging. “Don’t tell me _you’re_ going to defend him.”

Hades couldn’t help but laugh. “Certainly not. But why commiserate with me? Surely you’ve better people to complain to.”

“I just thought I’d see what you’re like first-hand since Annaiette seems to like you.”

“And what conclusion have you drawn?”

“Still can’t fathom how she manages after everything you did…” She paused a moment before giving him a sidelong glance. “I still don’t like you, but at least you’re honest.” She said this so matter-of-factly that Hades nearly laughed again.

“I could say the same for you,” he said dryly, though a hint of a chuckle made it through. “However, I do think I prefer you over that brother of yours.”

She made a small _hmph_ of acknowledgement but said nothing more. They spent the rest of their walk back to the Tower in a somewhat tense but comfortable silence, and Hades could see the smirk on her face out of the corner of his eye.

* * *

By the time they returned, the cooking preparations seemed to be well underway with everyone in high spirits. Hades had intended to simply deliver the wine with Alisaie and then take his leave—while he would enjoy spending the time to further irritate the Exarch, he was not so delusional to think that any of them actually wished to do any celebrating with _him_ , and he was tired besides _._

“Hades, where are you going?”

So what, then, was the relief in his chest at the sound of Annaiette’s voice?

“I shall leave you all to your celebrations—do keep yourselves out of trouble,” Hades said over his shoulder, but to his surprise, he found Annaiette already making her way toward him.

“You don’t want to stay? We’re making stew—if you like that sort of thing.” She said this casually despite her obvious disappointment, but he noticed that she gave him an out all the same.

A voice in the back of his head told him to leave—told him to leave because he was not one of _them_ —

His hesitation was not lost on her, and she gave him a reassuring smile. “I can bring you some later if you like,” she said brightly. “But if you want to stay, there are some vegetables that need chopping.”

In spite of the clamoring of the voice in the back of his head, this was how Hades then found himself at the kitchen table, with a knife, a small bundle of carrots, and his sleeves rolled up. It was no trouble to peel and chop the carrots but there was something surreal about doing so; it had been years and years since he last peeled and chopped anything by hand—not since he was young Solus out in the field—and though the feeling was almost alien to him now, there was something just the slightest bit pleasant about it.

It wasn’t long until Alisaie finished her own vegetable tasks, whereupon she took it upon herself to open one of the bottles of mead. Hades was acutely aware of how she watched him with a sort of mystified fascination on her face as she sipped from her glass.

“Is it so shocking that an Ascian knows how to chop carrots?” he asked in amusement without looking up from his work.

“I’m more shocked that you’re doing it at all,” Alisaie said over the rim of her glass.

“‘Twould seem Emet-Selch wishes to partake in the activities of us mere mortals.”

The corner of Hades’ mouth twitched at Urianger’s offhand words.

“If I’m to be mortal, then I must have the full mortal experience. I will settle for no less.”

The sound of Annaiette’s snort of laughter behind him was what tipped the scales and he found he could no longer keep his mouth from spreading into a smile. As he did his work—somewhat clumsily, he was mortified to discover—he noticed the vague feeling of guilt just on the periphery of his mind. But it was a guilt of a different sort, not one borne directly from his horrific misdeeds but rather his presence here in spite of them: it felt almost wrong for _him_ to find some enjoyment in this fleeting, mortal moment, after all he had done…

The sizzle of cooking meat quickly wrenched him back from the depths of his thoughts.

“It certainly took you long enough,” Alisaie said once he finished chopping the last carrot. Hades didn’t think he had taken an inordinate amount of time—Urianger was only just finishing up as well—but it seemed she was eager to have drinking partners; she leaned across the table to place a glass before him and Urianger, before pouring them both generous helpings of mead. She paused a moment as though considering her thoughts before pouring out one more glass and calling out to both the Exarch and Annaiette—both refused as they were busy searing meat, though Hades briefly wondered if Annaiette’s refusal was instead due to the habit Alisaie had told him about during their earlier outing.

He didn’t have long to wonder, though, as he found Alisaie looking to him expectantly. “Well, don’t leave me here to drink alone, Emet-Selch. If you do drink,” she added somewhat hesitantly, as though it was unfathomable that an Ascian would ever have reason to abstain from alcohol.

He let out a huff of amusement before picking up the glass. “I am not opposed. Cheers, then,” he said, holding the glass up towards her. She held hers up but didn’t clink it against his; instead she shot a look toward Urianger, who took a few moments to realize that they were waiting on him before he hurriedly set his knife down to raise his own glass.

“Cheers,” said Urianger, smiling as he extended the glass.

This mead was only marginally more palatable than the mead he had once found Annaiette drinking at the Wandering Stairs, and now he could not be sure if it was indeed because of skewed tastes due to his time as Emperor or if the the quality of the mead might be indicative of the quality of other liquors of the First. Still, in his very-much-not-royal position here, he resisted the urge to make a comment; there was no point in boasting about such experiences, especially when they were attached to his time ruling the Empire…

“Emet-Selch, as there remains some time yet before our meal,” Urianger said as he turned to him. “I find myself fascinated by the component the Exarch installed in the management node, and I pray thou wouldst indulge me: what magicks doth it employ to do such a thing in so small a device? It is true that Garlean magitek hath similar capabilities, but none so small as the component not three ilms long in one’s hand.”

Hades couldn’t stifle a smile at the earnest look on Urianger’s face—truly the face of a scholar hungry for knowledge. He downed the remainder of his glass before nodding and shifting in his seat to better face Urianger. “Certainly. It’s small size can be attributed to a combination of refined aetherochemical circuitry and similarly refined manufacturing facilities currently nonexistent in Garlemald…”

And it was then that Hades found himself starting from what he considered the basics of “modern” Allagan aetherochemical circuits. His intent to briefly indulge Urianger’s request quickly grew into a full-fledged lecture on the history of Allagan circuitry, and it felt so natural and so familiar and as he talked he could not keep his memories of Amaurot from surfacing in the back of his mind—memories of lecturing at the Akadaemia before rapt students just as eager as the fragmented Elezen at the table beside him, now joined by the ostensibly disgruntled Crystal Exarch who was very obviously holding on to each and every word, and Annaiette, who had the look of one out of her depth but fascinated all the same. It was not readily apparent if Alisaie cared for the conversation, on the other hand; she was busy sipping her mead and shelling the walnuts that Annaiette had placed in the middle of the table, but more than once Hades caught her head moving with the telltale signs of interest even with her attention focused elsewhere.

When the topic reached a natural breaking point—that is, when he finished describing the initial aetherochemical breakthrough which allowed the Allagans to begin the manufacture of smaller and smaller components—he realized with surprise that he had been talking without interruption for the past half bell. “Does that answer your question in some way?” Hades asked, mostly to Urianger but he glanced to the Exarch as well.

“Yes, very much so. Thou hast my thanks for this indulgence, Emet-Selch,” said Urianger, and he looked almost awestruck from the entire experience.

“If I might ask a follow-up question,” said the Exarch suddenly, “I am curious to know how such small circuits maintain signal integrity in the midst of aetherial noise generated around the circuit.” The Exarch looked almost conflicted as he asked his question—it was obvious his curiosity was only _just_ getting the better of his feelings toward Hades.

“First, I think the Exarch and Annaiette need a drink,” Alisaie interjected as Hades opened his mouth to respond. At some point during his lecture she had sampled one of the wine bottles, and so she put a glass in front of the Exarch and began slowly pouring.

Amid the increasingly distressed sounds of the Exarch as his glass grew ever fuller, Hades looked to Annaiette and wondered if what he and Alisaie had discussed in the markets was true; Alisaie had no reason to lie about it but he was curious to see for himself regardless...He took the open bottle of mead and pushed a glass before her.

“Mead, Annaiette?”

He saw her eyes flick quickly to the bottle opening before she smiled and shook her head. “No, thank you,” she said brightly, but though her face was perfectly untroubled, he saw a subtle pulse in her soul that betrayed her anxiety.

“Annaiette, I got a bottle for you—it’s there on the counter,” said Alisaie when she had finished tormenting the Exarch, leaving him with a comically full glass of wine that was almost overflowing.

“Oh! Thank you,” Annaiette said in surprise, and when she got up from her seat to fetch it, Alisaie briefly met Hades’ gaze as though to say ‘ _I told you so_ ’ before moving to fill Urianger’s empty glass.

When Annaiette returned and poured herself mead from the freshly unsealed bottle and Hades had refilled his and Alisaie’s glasses with the already-opened one, Alisaie held her glass aloft and gave the Exarch a sidelong glance.

“All right, then, Exarch—this celebration was your idea. What shall we drink to?”

The Exarch slowly raised his glass—the wine spilled slightly and rolled down his fingers—and nodded to them all. "To getting our friends home safe and sound!"

They all replied in earnest and clinked their glasses to hers before drinking—Hades snorted into his glass at the sight of the Exarch struggling to sip his wine without spilling it. “Now, as you were saying, Exarch,” said Hades once he emptied his glass. “You had a question about aetherial noise?”

“Indeed I did, Emet-Selch,” the Exarch said, nodding. “Surely there are techniques to mitigate interference at such small scales.”

Hades raised an eyebrow with pleasant surprise. “That is correct. Allow me to explain…”

The explanation started well enough, but he eventually found himself in the midst of a tangent about how poor standards in development and testing of computational devices resulted in loss of precision, which briefly destabilized the Allagan economy before he and Lahabrea could put it right. Though he wasn’t sure how he had gotten into this subject or why he had gone so deep into into it, it had been _quite_ the event and he wished to impress the following fact upon the Exarch and Urianger:

“This all happened, you see, because the Allagans thought they knew better than me,” said Hades with a frown.

“And what did they say about you, Emet-Selch?” Alisaie asked coolly as she poured him another helping of mead.

“They _said_ ,” Hades began indignantly after nodding to her and taking a sip, “ _they dared to tell me_ that I—their _advisor_ —was speaking out of turn and that I was being _too conservative_. ‘Don’t get your tail in a twist, nothing will go wrong,’ they said.”

“Excuse me, Emet-Selch. Your _tail?_ ” the Exarch interrupted, a look of horror on his face.

Hades smirked. “The Empire’s economy was brought to its knees and your takeaway was that I had a tail,” said Hades with a snort of amusement. “My vessel at the time was a Miqo’te.” He gestured vaguely at the Exarch. “Like you.” He gestured vaguely at his own hair. “Except more like this. I’m told my ears were endearing.”

It took him a few moments to realize that he was laughing.

“Hades, are you all right?” came Annaiette’s voice, and when he turned to her, he noted that his neck and shoulders were far too loose for his liking. The Warrior of Light looked amused and somewhat concerned, and the glow of her soul was oddly bright; he squinted in an attempt to keep his focus on her face.

“I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

“Your face is a little red, that’s all,” she said, grinning. “I think you ought to eat something—the stew is probably ready.”

He smiled and watched her and her near-blinding glow as she got up from her seat and moved to the stove—it wasn’t until the Exarch loudly cleared his throat that he tore his eyes away and turned back to these eager students of Allag. “Where was I?”

“Circuit design to mitigate interference,” said Urianger, whose face had turned a wonderful shade of red after Annaiette began sharing whiskey during Hades’ introduction to the problem of aetherial interference. The words seemed almost sluggish in Urianger’s mouth—they came out slowly enough for this fact to catch Hades’ oddly tenuous attention.

“Ah, that’s right. Now, as I was saying—”

But he didn’t get further than that before Annaiette’s voice cut through his. “I think interference mitigation can wait until after you’ve all eaten,” she said, placing a bowl of stew in front of him and another in front of Alisaie.

The first inkling that something was wrong came when Hades nearly knocked the bowl over as he reached for the silverware. The next came when he put a hand to his chin to muse over what had just happened, only to find that his face was unexpectedly and concerningly warm. And finally, realization slowly, slowly dawned on him when said musing proved to be confusingly, bewilderingly difficult—

“What is happening to me?” he murmured quietly into his hand.

“What do you mean, ‘what is happening to you’?” said Alisaie incredulously—evidently he was not murmuring as quietly as he thought he was.

“Just what kind of mead is this?” Hades demanded, reaching for the mead and giving it an accusatory shake, which only made it slip from his fingers and fall back to the table with a heavy _THUNK_. The bottle was empty enough that it didn’t spill when it tipped over, but it caught the edge of the bowl of walnut shells and sent them scattering across the table and onto the floor.

“Emet-Selch!” Alisaie exclaimed as she hastily righted the bottle and the now-empty bowl of shells.

Annaiette appeared at his side—from where, he hadn’t the slightest. “Hades, what do you mean?” she said, worry etched on her face. “The mead is fine—everyone else has been drinking it, too.”

He frowned and rubbed his unbearably warm face.

“Oh dear, could it _possibly be_ that the illustrious Emet-Selch cannot hold his liquor...?”

Hades opened his eyes to find the Exarch watching him with a small and intolerably smug smile.

“And what manner of Garlean would I be were that the case? There is precious little to do in Garlemald in the dead of winter but drink, Emperor or otherwise.” He straightened up in his chair so as to make it clear to the Exarch that he was _very much_ holding his liquor in, but immediately he was hit with the full brunt of the mead and whiskey’s effects—his head and mind felt inexplicably light and sluggish both and it was a sensation that was somehow _foreign_ to him after the eons he had spent alive both before the Sundering and in his myriad of vessels after.

“Your face _certainly_ says otherwise,” the Exarch laughed, gesturing at him with the hand holding his second glass of wine. In spite of the troubling languor slowly taking hold of his thoughts, the way the wine spilled from the Exarch’s glass was not lost on Hades.

Annaiette’s effusive laugh drew his attention and he found her grinning—not mockingly, but rather with her unfailing kindness—and she placed a tall glass of water in front of him. “Don’t forget to drink water,” she said, smiling and cocking her head slightly to the side—this motion was strangely transfixing and it took him entirely too long to realize that she had gestured at his bowl of stew and urged him to eat before taking a bread roll from the basket that had appeared at some point in the center of the table.

“Upon deeper thought, ‘twould not be unrreasonable to presume an Aascian within a vesssel might exist on ssome level removed from the experiences of we Sundered souls,” said Urianger as Hades picked a roll from the basket himself. There was a self-satisfied smile on his reddened face that Hades didn’t often see. “Thou diidst make mention of having the full mortal experience, Emet-Sselch.”

“This is aall _Hy_ daelyn’s doing—because of Her, sensations of the flessh are far more overwhelming,” said Hades airly.

Alisaie grimaced. “ _Sensations of the flesh_ ,” she repeated, and Annaiette barked with laughter.

It seemed Alisaie had no desire to speak of sensations nor the flesh in which they come; Annaiette’s exploits were a ready conversation topic that _wasn’t_ the Crystal Tower or its contents, and so this was how their supper was spent—stew and bread and tales of the different sorts of beasts felled by the great Warrior of Light’s blade.

“The strangest things, though,” said Annaiette, after downing yet another shot of whiskey, “the strangest things are the angry piles of sticks in Kholusia—haven’t the slightest idea why they exist but at this point I’ll not question it. I did get a nasty burn from one when I got sloppy and let it hit me.”

Hades could no longer get a proper hold of his thoughts after the additional alcohol Alisaie had offered them—he vaguely wondered if perhaps he ought to stop, but this _sensation of the flesh_ was so fascinating that he didn’t want to refuse—regardless, he could see that Annaiette seemed perfectly unaffected by the shocking amount of alcohol she had consumed.

“Annaiette, are yoou certain you’ve aactually had something to drink?” Hades asked, crossing his arms. When she merely replied with a grin and a gesture at her personal half-empty bottle of mead, Hades huffed as the corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk.

“Perhaaps, Emet-Selch, thou wouldst find thyyself of like constitution had thy vesssel come of age in Limsa Llominsa,” Urianger chuckled, which garnered laughs from all but Hades—he found himself pleasantly surprised by this revelation and instead arched an eyebrow in approval.

There was a lull in their conversation whilst they all busied themselves with water and second helpings of stew, though Annaiette instead sat there with a look that made it quite clear she was puzzling over something about him.

“What is it?” Hades asked when this only continued.

“Hades, have you really never been drunk before?” asked Annaiette, eyeing him in disbelief.

Her question drew the attention of the rest of the table, and Hades quickly found all eyes on him in anticipation of his answer. He tried to think—a task which was getting only more difficult as the moments wore on—back on his previous vessels, and he remembered countless instances where he’d drunk his companions under the table…

And now that he thought on it—there had been a vague fogginess but nothing like he felt now—nothing like the way his entire body seemed to be succumbing to it—

And slowly— _slowly_ —realization dawned on him.

That selfsame gnawing presence that had poisoned his soul for eons and eons had been _there_ as well, existing as a buffer ‘twixt soul and vessel—

There with him—dampening those sensations which could afford him a measure of escape—

“I—iit wasn’t—it wassn’t _permitted_.”

When there was no response, he glanced up to find Annaiette oddly stricken, but his notice seemed to snap her out of it and quickly her smile returned.

“Well, Hydaelyn has no such restriction on the consumption of alcohol. For better or for worse,” she laughed.

“Easy for you to say,” Alisaie said cheekily. “Emet-Selch appears to have gotten the ‘worse’ part of ‘for better or for worse.’ But seeing as he is here for the full mortal experience…”

It was then that he found Alisaie filling his glass with wine.

“Alisaie…” said Annaiette as she looked from her to Hades with slight hesitation. But Alisaie did not share her misgivings and waved a hand as though to wave Annaiette’s concerns away.

“He’ll be fine. Won’t you, Emet-Selch?”

There was a challenge in her words and in his eagerness to push the thoughts of Zodiark’s influence as far from his mind as possible, he took the glass and raised it toward her.

“Of coourse. Cheers.”

With another cheeky smile, Alisaie clinked her glass to his.

“Pray forgive this return to our earlier connversation, there is something that I found cuurious, Annnaiette,” the Exarch asked when further challenges from Alisaie did not surface. “You have faced all mannner of beasts from mundane to faantastical, and yet it is the calx that you find sstrangest?”

Annaiette laughed—she laughed her loud, barking laugh and the sound of it pulled at something in Hades’ chest.

“All those _fantastical_ beasts by now are expected, all things considered. But those godsdamned piles of sticks just wandering out there, ready to murder any poor soul who walks by minding their own business.”

The rest of the table broke out into laughter and Hades couldn’t help but laugh along with them.

“So, hero, if a piile of sticks was the strangest, what was second strangest?” he asked after taking a sip of wine.

She tilted her head from side to side as she considered his question

“Second, I think, are the tomatoes,” she said finally, grinning

“I had somehow forgotten all about the tomatoes,” the Exarch laughed

Hades’ confusion must have been apparent, because Alisaie shot him a look of disbelief

“The murder tomatoes in _your_ city,” said Alisaie and he might have felt guilty if not for the way Annaiette and the others were laughing

“Ah. Thoose tomatoes belonged to Halmarut,” said Hades airily. “I mmerely recreated them. For aaccuracy’s sake.”

“Was it typical for veegetables to spring to life and attack people in your time?” asked the Exarch

Hades found himself laughing again

“It was not unheeard of in the laaboratories,” he said. “And rejected Concepts were oftenn things that came to llife but shouldn’t, and then subssequently attacked you.”

“Mayhaps ‘tis not ouur place to criticize Amaurot’s vegetables, Exarch, with the Great Gubal Liibrary and its animate tomes which serveth as its guardians.”

The Library quickly led to them reminiscing about Sharlayan—Hades thought it fitting that one such as Urianger was a product of its institutions but Alisaie less so, and he supposed it wasn’t far fetched for the Exarch to have come from there, considering his more scholarly qualities that had emerged during their work on the Tower

The talk of Sharlayan stretched into the evening—these three souls so eager to talk about their distant home and their shared experiences—Hades and Annaiette had little to contribute but to listen to their happy recollections of bygone times was surprisingly pleasant, and the guilt that might have nagged him due to Garlemald’s role in the abandonment of their Dravanian colony was kept at bay by all the liquor and wine he had by now imbibed—Annaiette busied herself with refilling his water glass and insistently pushing bread and stew at him but he kept forgetting whilst he listened to their increasingly animated stories about various professors and courses at the Studium and Alisaie’s gleeful retellings of her brother’s various gaffes

“I’m always in awe of how smart you all are,” Annaiette laughed, resting her chin on her hand when Urianger returned to his seat after describing how one of their teachers had gotten some such calculation wrong and had a very very bad time of it “My studies in Limsa were child’s play in comparison.”

“And hhow did you come to live in Limsa Lominsa?” Hades asked. “Hardly the origin I wwould expect of our intrepid Elezen hero.”

She laughed again as she popped a walnut into her mouth “I was a child when my parents finally had enough of Gridania and followed my aunt to La Noscea.”

“But that raiises one further question,” said Hades, arching an eyebrow “What, then, brought your aunnt to La Noscea? I shall assume she, too, is of the Elezen persuaasion.”

“ _She_ tired of the shite in Gridania first and decided to try her luck in Limsa Lominsa. She’d fallen in with pirates by the time my parents were finally ready to be rid of the Shroud.”

The Exarch was in the middle of drinking water and nearly choked at how the words so casually left Annaiette’s mouth

“Pardon—did you ssay _‘pirates’_?” the Exarch sputtered

“I did,” Annaiette said as her shoulders shook with amusement “She’d given up sailing by the time I was old enough to study in Limsa, but she was hell-bent on making sure her nice farm girl niece could fend off the ‘swiving whoresons what pass for men.’”

“Why do yyou look so _surprised_ , Exarch?” asked Alisaie and Hades chuckled at her teasing-but-actually-somewhat-resentful tone of voice

“I’m not ssurprised! I-impresssed is probably a more suuitable word,” said the Exarch hastily. He might have been blushing but it was difficult to tell through the flush the alcohol had given him

Prior to now, Hades had been confident that the alcohol was hardly affecting Annaiette at all. That is, until he noticed that her personal bottle of mead was empty and that she now appeared to be pulling up the hem of her shirt to show them something on her stomach

“I got stabbed once in a tavern fight,” she laughed, pointing to a raised scar a few ilms in length on her abdomen just underneath her rib cage and smiling as though it was typical of aunts to take their adolescent nieces into tavern fights “I was lucky a party of adventurers were near and knew some conjury. My mother nearly killed my aunt when she found out—just about strangled her and then made me shovel dung for a moon once the wound was healed.”

That particular scar was perhaps the least exciting one decorating her stomach, however, and it was a fact that did not escape the notice of their companions—Alisaie had no qualms leaning across the table to examine them closer, and it took Hades everything he had in his addled mind to not burst into laughter at the shade of bright red that developed on the Exarch’s face when Annaiette lifted her shirt just a little bit too high and revealed the band of her smallclothes

“What about that one?” Alisaie asked, and it seemed she, too, was perhaps a bit too deep in her cups—she pointed at a blotchy patch of skin on Annaiette’s side and accidentally poked her—not that she seemed to notice nor care

“Ifrit, I think. Ifrit or Nidhogg. Fire, in any case.”

“I suppose whhat few scars I have in this form will make no difference once we’ve returned to our bodiies,” said Alisaie as she eased back into her chair—Annaiette dropped the hem of her shirt and laughed, completely oblivious to the Exarch all but bursting into flame beside alisaie, who was now imminently turning her attention on urianger

“emet-sselch, thou hast been with us for but a sshort while, and already thou hast gained a number of scars,” said urianger in a thinly-veiled attempt to redirect her

fortunately for Urianger, most of Hades’ shame had eroded away the day Hydaelyn delivered him back to life and the alcohol easily eroded the rest, so he loosened the string holding the collar of his shirt together to show the scars on his chest left by the allagan monstrosities that had attacked them by the data relay

“ah, theese, you mean?” the healing magicks hadn’t been enough to completely prevent scars, so there were faint claw marks that spread across his chest “not to mention those inexpl—inexpili— _mysteriously_ left by Hyyydaelyn,” he managed to add, and he found himself lifting the hem of his own shirt up “to remind me of myy place, I’m sure”

he put a hand on the darkened starburst scar that stretched across his abdomen

the memory of his final, desperate battle with the Warrior of Light

where he so very nearly killed her

and he wouldn’t have ever known just whose life he had taken

without warning he felt emotion welling up in his chest and his eyes

he knew what would come next but he didn’t have the capacity to stop himself

and soon he found hot tears falling into his lap

and as he lowered his shirt he couldn’t keep from sobbing

“i’m—ah—i’m just—” but he didn’t know what he was trying to say only that he wanted to say _words_ and he looked up to annaiette as though he might find answers in her

she looked surprised and concerned and unsure what to do and suddenly he was laughing and sobbing at the same time in the glow of the soul he had somehow forgotten the color of for a thousand thousand years and he might not have ever remembered if she had died if she had become a lightwarden _if he had succeeded_

“being killed was—it was the best thiing that has haappened to me” he laughed

and laughed

and the tears wouldn’t stop

“erm—it’s pretty late, best we all get some rest. i’ll be back in the morning to help clean up…”

he felt hands coaxing him out of the chair but he hadn’t the slightest idea what was happening anymore

“no, no, you needn’t worry, it won’t take long at all to clean this up. will you be all right…?”

“i’ll be fine. i better get this one back to the pendants...”

a small laugh

“well, good night, everyone! i’m glad we had the chance to do this.”

another laugh

more goodbyes

a hand keeping him upright by the arm

“come on, hades. not bad for your first time, i think—you didn’t even throw up.”

it was dark out and the sky reminded  
him  
of the rift

and he wondered if

the rift was

here to take him

“am i going to die?”

a laugh

“no, i don’t think so.”

“ah. that’s good.”

the  
stairs looked nice

“hades—hades, don’t lie down here—why are you lying on the stairs—”

“madam, do you...would you like some help?” 

“it’s all right, i can manage. he’s just had a bit much to drink. come on, we’re almost there—”  
tugging on his  
arm

“ohh, very _well_ , then, hhero—”

standing on the landing then  
pulled somewhere

it was fine

her soul felt safe and  
familiar and  
he was content to  
go  
wherever it pleased her to take him

“take off your coat”

“it’s cold...”

a snicker

“it’ll only be cold for a moment”

and the world turned and  
he was on his  
side but it was soft

he looked  
up and blinked  
and nearly sobbed again at the  
sight of that soul

“hades, don’t cry…”

the sound of his  
name  
pushed him over the edge

and he crie d

“athena— _i_ —you were dead—youu were gone—i— _athena—i missed—_ ”

and there was a cloth on his face to  
wipe the tears

and a smile

and

“i’m here now. go to sleep, hades.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **tl;dr: the hangover tomorrow is gonna be amazing**
> 
> i forgot to add a note lol. this chapter was extra long because it's been a while and i couldn't just stop it in the middle of drinking night :P 
> 
> as always, i love all of you <3


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